God's Eye
by Todeswind
Summary: Harry Dresden gets misplaced after the events of the Darkhallow. Suffice it to say tossed to the edge of the galaxy, he still manages to stir up trouble. After all, the universe exists to trouble Harry Dresden.
1. Chapter 1

A / N : This story starts at the end of Dead Beat, and progresses from that point onwards.

Taken from chapter forty two of Dead Beat

Cowl kept on chanting, and I saw his body arch with tension. Over the next minute or so, he actually, physically rose above the ground, until his boots were three or four inches in the air.

His voice had become part of the wild storm, part of the dark energy, and it rolled and boomed and echoed all around us. I began to understand the kind of power we were dealing with. It was power as deep as an ocean, and as broad as the sky.

It was dark and lethal and horrible and beautiful, and Cowl was about to take it all in. The strength it would give him would not make him a match for the entire White Council. It would put him in a league so far beyond them that their strength would mean virtually nothing.

It was power enough to change the world. To reshape it after one's own liking.

The tip of the vortex spun down, danced lightly upon Cowl's lips, and then slipped gently between them. Cowl howled out the last repetition of his chant, his mouth opening wide. I ground my teeth.

Bob hadn't been able to help me, and I couldn't let Cowl complete the spell. Even if it killed me. I drew in my magic for the last spell I would ever throw, a blast to slam into Cowl, disrupt the spell, let that vast energy tear him to bits. Kumori sensed it and I heard her let out a short cry. The knife burned hot on my throat.

And then the dinosaur I'd summoned plunged through the clouds of wild spirits and headed directly for Kumori, her eyes blazing with brilliant orange flames. Tyrannosaur Bob let out a bellow and swiped one enormous talon at Kumori. Cowl's apprentice was tough and competent, but no amount of training or forethought can prepare you for the sight of an angry dinosaur coming to eat your ass.

She froze for the briefest second, and I turned, shoving away from her. The knife whipped against my throat, I felt a hot sting. I wondered if that was what Grevane had felt.

There was no more time. I flung myself across the grass, gripped my staff in both hands, and swung it like a baseball bat at Cowl's head.

The blow connected, right on what felt like the tip of his upturned jaw, snapping his mouth shut and knocking him to the ground. The vortex abruptly screamed and filled with a furious red light. I choked out a cry and fell down on my right side to the ground, bringing up my shield bracelet and holding it over me in an effort to protect myself from the vast forces now flying free from the botched spell.

There was more sound, so loud that no word could accurately describe it, incandescent lightning, screaming faces, and forms of spirits and ghosts, and trembling earth beneath me.

And blackness fell.

When I came to my senses there was no vortex of dark magic, no lightning, no storm, no rain. No signs that there had been a battle between necromancers at all. There was also no field and no signs that I was anywhere remotely in Chicago.

I lay there for a moment, the aching throb of my ribs competing with the swirling pains in my head. I slowly gathered my wits, assessing my surroundings. The dark quiet sounds of night echoed around me, tiny chirps and soft cries of night-time creatures murmuring passively in the shadowy forrest around me.

Something furry and rodent like sniffed my face inquisitively before scuttling away in fear, monkeyish in its gait. I looked down and saw that I had fallen around Bob the skull and curled my body around him as I had shielded myself.

Orange flame flickered to life in the eye sockets. "Some show, huh?" Bob said. He sounded exhausted.

"You had to go get the dinosaur, eh?" I said. "I figured you'd just grab a handy zombie."

"Why settle for wieners when you can have steak?" the skull said brightly. "Pretty good idea, Harry, talking to me once Cowl sat me on the ground. I didn't want to work for him anyway, but as long as he had the skull…well. You know how it is."

I grunted. "Yeah. What happened?"

"The spell backlashed when you slugged Cowl," Bob said. "Did a bit of property damage."

I coughed out a little laugh, looking around me. "Yeah. Cowl?"

"Most likely there are little pieces of him still filtering down," Bob said brightly. "And his little dog, too."

"You see them die?" I asked.

"Well. No. Once that backlash came down, it tore apart every enchantment within a hundred miles. Your dinosaur sort of fell apart." He blinked in surprise as he realized where we were.

"Oh," Bob said, "Uh... Harry we aren't where we're supposed to be."

I grunted, "I noticed Bob."

"That's not supposed to happen boss," The flickering flames in the skull's eyes narrowed in annoyance, "I mean, sure it should have killed you or well made you into a god but not just moved you..."

"Don't sound so disappointed," I shook my head frustratedly, "It figures, I never follow any of the rules with any other thing in my life. Why should this happen logically?"

Bob snorted impressively for someone without lungs, "It doesn't work like that, the laws of physics _have_ to operate in a certain way. Murphy's law doesn't apply to magic."

I lifted myself to my feet gingerly, stretching my legs and trying to massage the stiffness out of my body, "Well apparently there are a couple of laws of physics we didn't take into account because this isn't Kansas Dorthy."

Bob didn't really have much to say to that.

I lifted the silver pentacle my mother gave me, a representation of the five elements bound by a circle of control, and put a small effort of will into it. The forrest came into view bathed in the dull bluish white luminescence of my magic. The interweaved branches of the tightly packed trees spread dark and spidery patterns of light in the distance, only hinting at the path beyond.

"Any guesses at where we are Bob?"

"Not a clue boss," Bob's voice became pensive, "Could you give me a better look at those trees?"

"Uh, yeah sure," I lifted the skull and put its face nearly up to the bark.

"Oh no," Bob coughed, "Er... Boss... these trees are tropical. As in not in America."

"Ok," I sighed, "So where are we then?"

"Laos, Cambodia, Brazil, Australia, how should I know? Trees aren't really my thing," Bob said scathingly, "Just open a portal to the Nevernever so we can go back home."

I gave Bob an inquisitive look. Opening a way wasn't the same as just opening a door. Opening an unmapped way into the Nevernever could easily drop me in the middle of some big nasty faeries or the center of a cloud of poison. As a creature of the Nevernever Bob knew this better than I did. "You sure about that Bob?"

"There are a lot of nasty creatures in the rainforest Sahib, without knowing what you're doing it's probably less dangerous for you to deal with the Fairies. Between poisonous snakes, crocodiles, piranhas and armed rebels you're probably better off there."

I didn't really have a counter argument to that. I waved my staff across the air in front of me and whispered, "Aparturum." A shimmering hole of air appeared in front of me, a small portal into the world between ours and what lay beyond. I tucked Bob's skull back into the makeshift pouch tied to my waist and walked through.

The thin skin of magic between spaces felt different than it usually did, some how more greasy than the sensation I usually associated with crossing over. A tingling sensation of menace, I was not somewhere nice.

The light of my pendant shone out into the pitch black space of the Nevernever, illuminating jagged spikes and spires of stone. I winced as I turned and one of the razor sharp spines cut the back of my hand, spreading a narrow spray of blood.

It dripped down my fingers and to the ground before I had even realized my hand was cut, sticky wet redness dropping the the ground. Nothing good ever comes from blood in the Nevernever.

"Uh oh... I take back what I said about the snakes," Bob said, the single eye light peeking out of the makeshift skull carrier I'd made from an old T-shirt tentatively, "Uh Harry... we should leave..."

"Where are we Bob?"

"Don't worry about that Harry. Just go, now." Bob was worried. Bob was _never_ worried. Annoyed, angry, frustrated but never afraid. As a spirit of intellect he generally felt such mortal concerns were beneath his interests.

"Where Bob!" I hissed under my breath, wrapping my hand in a strip of my shirt.

"The outside. We're on the border of the outside."

"Oh, god no."

The Nevernever was the space between our world, the real world, and what lay beyond. Demons and Faeries came from the Nevernever and while they weren't _nice_ by anyone's standards they obeyed certain physical laws, followed certain metaphysical constants. The Outside was different, outsiders weren't bound by the sorts of magics and physics the rest of us had to deal with, the servants of the Old Gods they had unimaginable powers of nightmare and corruption.

Though shalt not open the outer gates was a law of magic so profound the White Council would consign someone to death for committing, a crime on par with murder or necromancy. Anything that chose to live on the edge of Nevernever wasn't something I wanted to meet. The creatures of the outside were so evil that even speaking of them risked death. Demons and faeries were callous and evil, outsiders were something else entirely. Unnatural and wrong.

Not something I wanted to tangle with at the best of times, especially not when every fibre of my being was screaming to just lie down for a week and sleep. I was barely standing on my own two feet, in no shape to be battling the creatures who chose to sleep in the shadow of the outer realms.

It was time to leave.

I turned to re-enter my portal and discovered, much to my horror, that it was no longer there, "Bob what happened?"

"It's the border to the outside Harry, ways to the real world don't last long here. You're going to have to open another one." Bob whined, "And you'd better do it quick."

I waved my staff and chanted the spell to open a door. Nothing happened, "Bob it's not working."

"That's not good." Bob looked out into the distance with his glowing eye in the direction of a distorted howl echoing out in the darkness where some nightmare creature smelled blood, "Because it sounds like the natives are restless."

I ran.

There's no shame in avoiding something you can't handle taking on directly, not when your life is on the line. It may not have been the most manly thing for me to do but I stand by my decision. I fled, stumbling in the near blinding darkness scrambling over the razor sharp outcroppings of rock. They cut into my shoes and my duster, the magically enhanced leather of my coat weathering the treatment far better than the rubber of my Nikes.

Engineered for the most perfect running experience my ass. They have yet to make a pair of shoes that can survive more that a couple weeks of my lifestyle before reverting to a sneaker like mass of torn fabric and laces barely fit to cover a foot.

I caught a glimpse of something lithe and cloying launched itself at me from above, howling bloody murder as it leapt towards me with outstretched claws. The burned flesh of my arm puckered as I raised my own mangled paw skywards, spreading my fingers and shoving a barrier of force between myself and the screaming thing. With a fleshy crack the creature bounced off my shield and into the razor sharp spines of stone, slicing its chest into a mess of gore and forcing me to my knees with a starling impact.

I rolled to the left as Bob screamed, "Behind you boss!"

A second fanged mess of matted fur wriggled past me, serpentine and slithering. Six glowing red pits shone in the darkness, undulating in a way eyes had no right to move. It sprung forwards, jaw dislocating wide enough to swallow me whole. I shoved forward with my staff, channeling momentum in the opposite direction of the creature. The wood collided with the inside of the creature's jaw like a cannon shot, the exploding viscera of the creatures head punctuated by my scream of, "Forzare."

Creatures jabbered, chittered and howled in the distance, promising further violence to come. My staff, still covered in the thick ichor of the creature's blood, crackled with the unsightly power of the outer realms. Playing a hunch I splashed my staff down into the pooling blood beneath the creature and yelled "Apartum," all too aware that the screaming voices were less and less distant with every second.

A narrow tear in the fabric of the Nevernever punched through the air, ephemeral and feeble by powered by the unnatural energies of the creature's blood. I dived through it and into a wide desert, stopping abruptly as a clawed hand shot out through the portal to the Nevernever and grabbed me by the ankle, talons sinking into the soft meat of my leg.

I screamed in pain and smashed my staff across the oblong face that jutted out of my way to the Nevernever, bursting a bulbous mass that might have been an eye. With a blunt screech of annoyance and a snuffling whoop the creature dragged me towards its fanged proboscis.

I reached out with my hand and punched forward, releasing the small reserve of energy left in them. The creature's hand buckled and twisted, breaking from it's arm at the wrist, severing tendons and ichor from the chitinous bundles of flesh. The creature's snarl of fury turned to a yelp of fear as the force of my attack disrupted the delicate magical energies of the doorway to the Nevernever, breaking the connection and collapsing the gateway with an immediate sucking gust.

Its distorted face fell to the dune, dissolving into ectoplasm. The viscous fluid quickly evaporated in the heat of the desert sand. That was one of the good things about creatures from the Nevernever, they tended not to leave a mess.

I sat on the dune massaging my leg waiting for the pain to subside, surveying my surroundings. I'd gone from Tarzan to a scene out of Lawrence of Arabia. The desert was surprisingly hospitable by comparison to the part of the Nevernever it opened up on. White tufts of sand billowed with the gentle breeze, sending shimmering patterns along the haze of heat on the horizon.

My coat, enchanted to never be too hot or too cold, was blissfully cool in the baking sun. Sometimes it's really cool to be a wizard, what can I say.

Falling back on my survival skills I pulled the pocket compass I keep in my duster pocket out and held it in the palm of my hand, watching the red and white needles as they spun backwards and forwards. The little red arrow finally came to a halt, shivering unhelpfully in the direction of my shadow. I tapped the compass to be sure but be damned, that little red arrow kept pointing to my shadow.

There was something in these dunes messing with the magnetic fields of the area I supposed, there are places like that in the Rocky Mountains. They screw with all sorts of things like cell phones and GPS's, or so I hear. I've never really gotten the chance to use a cell phone or a GPS. Anything more complex than a toaster oven has a bad habit of going wonky around a Wizard, even my old rotary telephone has to be repaired ever year or so due to the buildup of magical feedback.

Lucky for me I wasn't looking for north.

For all intents and purposes I was stranded in the desert till I could nurse my wounds and find a safe way into the Nevernever. I sure as hell wasn't going to risk opening up another way so close to the outside. Hell's bells, I might open up a door inside of it.

Staying in the desert meant finding water, and finding it fast. Even with my climate controlled coat, I would sweat out a dangerous amount of water in this heat. Magic can't make something from nothing and even a Wizard was only human. I would get dehydrated.

I hawked a lugie onto the back of the compass and whispered, "Agua dondé." Admittedly not the most impressive somatic component to a spell but I'd not been particularly poetic in my high school days. Casting is mostly about intent, if you believe that a certain set of words will invoke a certain power then it will. The more you believe it and the more you practice it the more it becomes part of your magic.

My spanish may have been downright awful, but my spell worked like a charm. The little red arrow spun in the opposite direction, eagerly pointing me to the nearest source of drinkable water. Humming the theme to Aladdin I trudged out across the desert.

Walking in sand isn't fun. Not the sort of packed and prepared sand you have on most beaches, that stuff is pretty much groomed to make it as nice for tourists as it can be, the real stuff. Sand dunes are more difficult to walk through than some of the worst backwoods trails. The deceptively smooth skin of the dunes conceals its shifting and treacherous nature.

The ground is uneven and unsteady, putting your foot in the wrong spot can just as easily agitate something venomous underground as cause an avalanche and bury you alive. There's a reason desert nomads tend to be no-nonsense types, when walking ten feet over open ground can kill you it tends to weed out optimism.

I hobbled forwards through the dunes, testing my path with my staff to make sure that no snakes or scorpions were in my way. I didn't think I was in America, I've been in the American Southwest enough to be able to recognize that sort of rocky, flat desert terrain. And I'd have remembered the blue and green striped lizards if I'd seen them.

They looked a bit like an iguana, but the nose was wrong. It was scrunched and angled upwards like some sort of deep sea fish. They lay in the dunes with their mouth's open in imitation of a flowering shrub. They waited for flies and small birds to try to harvest nectar before snapping shut, swallowing their prey whole.

Either venomous or unaccustomed to predators they observed me with disinterested casual aplomb, mildly aware of my existence. They weren't going to allow something so obviously unimportant to interrupt their meal. The regal disdain in their upturned noses reminded me of my own cat, Mister.

I'd been adopted by the Tomcat after I found him on the streets. We'd come to the arrangement that in exchange for caring for all of his needs and desires I would be allowed to continue cohabiting with his august personage. With time I'd come to realize that I'd been accepted into his apartment and was a member of his family. He'd been a fixture in my daily life for years, a 30lb ball of fluff and muscle eager for a scratch behind the ears and whatever food was available.

I could trust Thomas to feed him while I was gone. Thomas would make sure Mister and Mouse, my dog, were cared for in my absence. After all, what was family for? He may have been an Vampire of the White Court, an Incubus, but Thomas was my brother. I trusted him.

We'd both grown up lonely, he and I. Both of us desperately wanting a family, a real family. The sort that loves you and is there for holidays and the like. Our mother died giving birth to me. My father died when I was young and my foster parent, Justin DuMorne, was the closest thing to Darth Vader you'll find this side of Tatooine. I killed him with magic to save my own life when he tried to enslave my mind. Thomas' father and his twisted excuse for a family still lived, but when I compare my childhood and his I'm not sure who had it worse.

And more than likely he currently believed I was dead. I had to get home, had to let him know that I was alive and well. Thomas was a good man but if he didn't have my support any more he might well fall to his darker urges. For a vampire of the White Court that could easily get someone killed.

Too preoccupied with my own worries about Thomas' safety to worry about my own I stumbled over my own feet, rolling down a large dune uncomfortably clutching my body in a protective ball around Bob's skull. If it shattered and exposed Bob to sunlight it would burn the magic that made up his body to cinders, killing him. It was worth a few extra bruises to avoid that.

I landed at the base of the dune upside down in a substantially less than graceful pose. My staff thumped down into my kneecap, bouncing off it and onto the ground next to me. I swore angrily, cursing the dune, the staff, my knee, and the disciples of Kemmler for sending me to this godforsaken scrap of nowhere.

The sound of giggling shook me from my furious self pity. A muscular teenage boy sat on a rock not ten feet from me, juggling stones and apparently enjoying my discomfort greatly. The course wool and linen of his tunic and turban mirrored the browns and whites of the desert sand and stones, unpretentious and utilitarian. A long knife, almost a sword, hung from a loop on the boy's belt next to what looked tantalizingly like a waterskin.

I righted myself, brushing the sand from my front and held my hands up placatingly palms forward hands open in the most non-threatening gesture I could think of. I smiled and tried to speak to him, "Do you speak English?"

He yammered on unhelpfully in his native language, shaking his head in confusion. What did I expect, it's not like everyone learns English.

I'm terrible with languages, just ask anyone who's heard me speak latin if you don't believe me. You need a spell I'm your guy. You need a translation look elsewhere. Hey, just because I'm a wizard doesn't mean I know everything. Not that I'll ever admit it out loud but it's true.

Lucky for me I don't have speak the language to understand it. I'm a wizard. I cheat. I closed my eyes and focused on a walled off section of my thoughts, sending a question into my own mind, "Do you understand what he's saying."

A warm feeling of satisfaction that was decidedly not my own echoed in the recesses of my consciousness. They were the feelings of the creature residing within my own mind, the fallen angel Lasciel.

Well, that's not exactly true. She isn't really Lasciel.

She was a psychic construct who's abilities and mindset mirrored that of the real Lasciel. The fallen angel's coin was buried and warded underneath my apartment, but her shadow persisted offering me temptations. She would offer help and power all with the intention of getting me to take up the mantle of the Denarians. She was a dangerous and untrustworthy ally, only to be enlisted sparingly.

Lash's cheerful voice replied in a chipper glee titter that mirrored song as I felt the distinct sensation of a phantom hand, warm and friendly, on my shoulder, "Yes my host, of course I can."

"You know I hate it when you do that," I brushed my hand across my shoulder, dismissing the phantom hand. A subtle pang of regret for the loss of closeness and I clenched my teeth in annoyance. I would _not_ allow Lash to manipulate me.

"Just speak my host, and the words will come out as you need them to be."

Lash's smile rang in the back of my head as the boy's words twisted into English, incongruous with the natural movements of his lips like a dubbed Kung Fu flick. He'd apparently taken my silence for anger.

"Not that it couldn't have happened to anyone," he looked me up and down, taking in the substantial mass of my tall lanky frame, "I mean... you're big and have a lot of... not that you're fat... just... Talk damn you!"

"I'm looking for water," I interrupted his ranting, startling him into silence, "Where is it?"

"Oh," he sighed in relief, "Thank the gods, I feared the sea of sand had left your mind addled. The Eye of Ra often leaves men with little in the way of sanity."

"The eyes of Ra?" I repeated in confusion.

The boy pointed up to the sky, gesturing to the sun the way one might to for a child who was a bit slow. His smile was a bit too placating and friendly, in an unnecessarily convivial way, "Ra looks down on us always."

He ran a hand across his head, scratching at a mess of curly hair under his turban and exposing a tattoo in the center of his forehead. An elaborate design of raised arms around a twisted pair of snakes stood out glaringly on the dark skin of his face.

"If you say so," I waved vaguely in the direction he'd apparently come from dismissively ignoring his comment about gods, "So about this water."

"You haven't run away from one of the camps have you?" The boy's hand strayed to his dagger, "A deserter."

I glared at him in annoyance, "Kid I don't even know what country I'm in. So how about we skip ahead in this conversation to the point where we get me to that water."

"I am not just some mere child I am a Jaffa warrior," He balked at my insult, "Chosen by the gods, you will show me respect!"

"Uh huh," I leaned on my staff and shook my head, "Nope I don't think so."

"You challenge my honor?"

"No, I defy a petulant teenager too caught up in himself to realize that he's bullying a man lost in the desert," I gave him my most ominous wizardly glare, the one I reserve for fairy queens and members of the DMV, "Now I'm going to ask one more time before I stop being nice. Which way is water?"

"Enough Dera," A stern voice echoed across the dunes, "That will do."

A man in thick skirted chain-mail armor strode across the dunes surveying me over the lip of his high-necked armor. He held a heavy metal mace longer than my own wizard's staff tipped with a bulbous protrusion at each end covered in nicks and dents, a well used weapon. His broad mass and barely controlled muscles paired with a serene self confidence marked him as a uniquely dangerous individual.

The boy blushed and sheathed his sword, taking care not to look into the armored man's eyes, "Master Ul'tak, he challenged my honor."

"No Dera, you challenge your own honor. He only challenges his thirst," The older man reached over and slapped the boy across the back of the head, "The gods have no use for a foolish warrior who pulls out his blade when he could simply point to the road."

"Master I tried," The boy protested vehemently.

"Do not question me Dera, you are not so far past your prim'ta that you can claim to know more than I. You will go back to the village and see Ferun for additional training today. As you seem determined to use your blade you will do so against someone who can be expected to fight back," His dismissive appraisal of me was closer to the truth than I would have liked. I wasn't sure if I could fight off a cocker spaniel at the moment.

"Yes master," the boy bowed and ran up the dune, leaving me alone with the armored man.

"Uh, hi," I greeted him somewhat lamely.

He turned to me and eyed me the same way one might look at a disobedient hound. He tilted his head one way, then the other, memorizing my features. After a few minutes of close examination he finally spoke, "Who are you and how did you get here."

"The name's Harry Dresden. I got lost and ended up here," I flashed my most dazzling smile, "It was an accident."

"No," He shook his head, "It was not. People do not come here by accident. They are here by the will of the gods." His hand caressed the club in subtle menace, "They leave at their pleasure. You do not belong."

"No disagreement there," I slapped a particularly large insect off my neck that was so big it probably should have registered it's flight plan with the FAA, "I'll be out of your hair as soon as I can, I'm not here to cause trouble. Just give me some water and point me in the direction of America."

"Perhaps Dera was correct," he glared imperiously into my eyes, "You have altogether too much arrogance for a Tau'ri."

"Try it," I held my staff in both hands, taking up an offensive posture and standing my ground, "I'll give you one hell of a fight if I have to."

The man started laughing heartily, "You truly have no idea who I am do you?"

"Not a clue," I shrugged apologetically, "But if it makes you feel any better I'd probably do the same if I did."

"I can't tell if you're fearless, ignorant, or a skilled liar," the man shook his head, "But it is not for me to decide."

"Who does decide?" I licked my chapped lips, "And do they have water?"

"Come with me Harry of Dresden and we will see to your needs for now," The man held out his hand in a gesture of friendship, "The great god Heka will decide what to do with you when he arrives through the Eye of the Gods."

I took his hand into my own and shook firmly, going with it when he moved his arm to a hold further down my forearm and imitating in kind. His face broke into a genuine smile, "I think I like you Tau'ri. Do not make me regret this decision."

I followed the man's loping pace as he turned at waded across the dunes, ignoring the hissing chirp of Lasciels stifled gales of laughter. Somehow I got the distinct sense that the joke was on me.


	2. Chapter 2

After an hour of trudging through the sandy paths that led to the city of Nekheb I was absolutely convinced that I deeply needed to get in better shape. Beaten and battered from my recent necromancer punch up, I was huffing and puffing to keep up with Ul'Tak's long-shanked strides.

Thank god he'd shared from his water-skin or I wouldn't have made it. The water was hot and tasted vaguely of the animal the leather pouch had been cured from but as thirsty as I was it might as well have been ambrosia. I lapped up the water greedily as we walked, taking him at his word that he wouldn't need any.

Which brought me to my second conclusion. Ul'Tak wasn't human, at least not wholly so. There was something in his physical presence that was too deliberate for him to be vanilla mortal. His eyes focused a bit too far into the horizon, his heavy metal staff shouldn't have been carried one handed, and his heavy links mail troubled him no more than a T-shirt might have.

And I don't care how tough you are or how manly you think you are, you aren't going to be able to wear metal armor hot enough to fry an egg in the desert without sweating. Even Michael would have had trouble managing that, fist of God or no. But there he was, not even looking like he noticed the heat.

I hadn't been able to place his species yet, though I could be reasonably sure he wasn't a creature of the Nevernever. A fairy wouldn't ever willingly wear a jewelery of iron, the ferrous metal would burn their skin like acid.

That still left an unimaginably wide range of creatures to chose from. He referred to himself as a Jaffa, but I couldn't be sure if that were a nation, tribe, cast, or species.I could narrow that down once Bob and I had some privacy. For the moment 'not actively trying to kill me' was good enough for government work.

Which was just as well, because I kind of liked the guy.

He wasn't especially talkative, using few words and wasting fewer, but in his own way he had a rich sense of humor. I didn't get the half of it, but it spoke of a culture steeped in old ways and ancient tradition.

"Step too close to the servants of Apophis and you suffer his displeasure," he'd say when I stepped to close to the den of some poisonous creature or "The Tau'ri must walk on their own two feet before they try to fly," when he would step on loose shale and nearly fall.

He clearly considered me, a mere 'Tau'ri,' to be beneath him but there wasn't any malice in it. Humans were weak and frail, Jaffa were not. Ten miles of skirting disused goat paths and I was inclined to agree with him.

He could at least have _pretended_ to be winded for my benefit, a man has his ego after all.

I whooped with joy when we climbed the summit of a particularly unpleasant hill made up of jagged rock formations and looked out into the valley beyond. Ul'tak, unamused by my antics, pointed over the wide sands to a vision in the distance, shimmering with the heat haze of the evening sun.

"Holy Pharaohs Batman," I whispered under my breath in amazement, "We are not absolutely not in Kansas any more Toto."

"Woof," Bob weakly whispered in reply from my waist as he looked out at the city beyond in equal shock.

There stood a secret city of pyramids and palaces untouched by the ravages of time and generations of grave robbers. Great structures pierced the sky that would have made Giza crawl up into a ball in shame, glittering with mirrored panels of gold and the shining white of polished marble. My inner nerd squealed in glee at the sight of several buildings which were unquestionably floating around the central pyramid.

Not flying, freaking floating as though gravity didn't apply to them. Many hundreds of tiny pyramid shaped ships flew in and out of the pyramids without any visible method of propulsion.

Catching sight of my dinner plate sized eyes Ul'tak chuckled in rich basso, "Yes, Nekheb. The Gem of Heka. The land of plenty, come Dre'su'den. Your thirst will soon be quenched."

He didn't have to tell me twice. We all but sprinted down the mountain, following a winding goat path covered in the footsteps of mail boots. If I'd been halfway conscious and not totally delirious from hunger and thirst it might have occurred to me that running towards the village full of preternaturally agile and strong creatures might not be the best idea.

Had I been paying attention I might not have run face first into a transparent barrier of energy blocking the outer gate to the city. I hit it with enough force to set my ears ringing and numb my lips from the discharge of electricity. My tongue, numbed by the abrupt electric shock, slurred my words drunkenly as I used a creative mix of profanity to demonstrate my displeasure.

"By the Gods I pray you are a spy," Ul'tak chuckled to himself as he waved to the guardhouse atop the wall, "Would that our enemies send such obvious infiltrators."

"I... but, wha?" Articulacy escaped me as the barrier shimmered out of existence then snapped back into place as we past. Stars and stones, the magical forces required to create a permanent barrier of that size had to be monumental. It would require concentrated geomancy and a level of skill that I'd only ever heard of as rumor before, "How on Earth?"

Clearly pleased at my reaction, Ul'tak slapped me across the shoulders, "The magics of the gods are not for us to understand, only to obey."

His claims of serving a god were starting to worry me. There were powerful beings on Earth, creatures who'd forged their magic through rites and rituals too terrible for moral man to comprehend. The gate to the White Council citadel in Edinburgh might have been just as strong as the gate to Nekheb but the gate had a physical form to it. Covered with runes and protective symbols to channel power the citadel's magics were a collective work of the bygone wizard-craft. The gate of Nekheb was power, pure and simple. No runes, no wards, no props, just a pure projection of power.

It was freaking scary.

I didn't know much about the Egyptian deities, other than that they were particularly nasty and fond of necromancy on a level that defied belief. If one of the ancient gods of the middle east really was in the city I wouldn't be able to take him one on one in a fight, not so close to his place of power. It would be like fighting Mab or Titania in the Nevernever.

It was madness to attack an old god close to his seat of power, it granted creatures of magic insight and abilities to dwarf my own at the best of times. If Heka wasn't friendly to your friendly neighborhood wizard bad things were on the horizon.

We would just have to hope the god was friendly.

Yeah, sure. Keep dreaming Harry.

Greeting my companion with a salute and a declaration of "first prime" a dozen Jaffa fell into step around Ul'Tak, oblong maces at the ready and faces devoid of emotion. The whole situation felt a bit 'sig heil' for my taste.

They marched me down the streets of the great city in a protective phalanx, as much to trap me in as keep dangers out. It was just as well to have them, or I might have gotten lost in the sea of humanity. In contrast to the great desert outside, Nekheb was a thriving metropolis.

As far as the eye could see there were people everywhere, real human people. A good head shorter than the Jaffa and clad in the sort of practical white linens one would expect from the Bedouin. Countless stalls sold savory meats and spiced vegetables that wafted their alluring smells across the city, mingling with the bitter but oh-so-glorious scent of coffee from behind the canvas sun screens of a the numerous cafés. Two blocks of delicious smells and enough was enough, "I need to eat something."

Ul'tak shoved me forwards, pushing hard into the middle of my back. "After you have spoken to Heka."

I dug my heels in and turned to face the man's stoic visage, taking care to have my own most wizardly glare, "No. I need to eat _now_. I'm no good to you hungry. It's in your best interest for me to eat."

The Jaffa tilted his head in confusion, "Explain."

"Look, if I actually am a spy you need me to be strong enough to withstand questioning. You can't get much out of me if I'm dead," the Jaffa laughed in amusement and I tried not to think too hard about the Egyptian death magic. They very well might have been able to get something out of me even after I'd died. I'd just have to make sure my death curse made that impossible.

I continued as though I hadn't noticed their laughter, "And if I'm not a spy it would be a violation of the rules of hospitality not to feed a weary traveler. If I am to defend myself I need the energy."

The laws of hospitality are a big deal to the supernatural community, even the biggest and baddest of them wouldn't consider violating them. Especially not the biggest and the baddest of them. So much of their power is tied up in rules that a violation of them would be dangerous, potentially fatally so.

A young Jaffa to Ul'tak's left chimed in, "Master Ul'tak let me teach this Tau'ri his place." He cracked his knuckles soundly to leave no doubt what he meant by it.

"No, no Bashir," Ul'tak shook his head and gestured with a finger to a street vendor. The astonished woman scurried over with her cart, bowing her head to avoid eye contact with the Jaffa, "Defeating a weak enemy proves nothing."

He pushed a thick coin into the woman's hands and pointed to me, "Feed him."

I took the pocket of meat and vegetables shoved into an unleavened bread from the woman with the most sincere "thank you" I could remember having given anyone, and bit into it with relish, enjoying the taste of spiced meat and yogurt sauce, "Move over Burger King, we have a new contender for the crown."

The Jaffa looked at me in stoic incomprehension. My wit is wasted on the supernatural community.

I devoured two of them, licking the wax paper they were served on to make sure none of the food was wasted, then drank a full flagon of water before nodding to Ul'tak, "I'm ready for anything. Thank you."

"You will _earn_ that meal Dre'su'den." Ul'tak growled, "The hospitality of Heka is not without its price."

Slaked of hunger and thirst I followed my guide in apprehension as we marched through the city, wandering through avenues and paths that just hinted at many thousands of years of culture and development. Seemingly ancient hieroglyphs covered ziggurats stood atop multicolored frescoes of the Egyptian deities doing all sorts of godly things that couldn't have been more than a decade old.

It would have been beautiful if I hadn't been so god damned terrified. No longer hungry and starving my brain caught up to me enough to remind me why the name Heka sounded so freaking familiar. Heka was the Egyptian god of Magic, the king muckity-muck of all ritual magic.

And I had trespassed on his land. Stars and stones, just once I'd like for things to be easy.

"Not good Harry," Bob whispered to me as we walked past a row of spike mounted heads displayed as a warning to any would be heretics, "This is not good. The Egyptian pantheon was really not nice... Kemmler was fascinated with them... obsessed even... and you know nothing good ever came from something he liked."

"Shut up," I whispered back to the skull, "They'll hear you." I didn't need Bob reminding me of exactly how totally screwed I was. I knew that well enough on my own. And something told me that these people weren't going to react well to a disembodied head carrying a servitor spirit. Call it a hunch but I wasn't going to risk it.

I had to squint my eyes as we walked into the largest pyramid, the reflection of torchlight on the polished gold made it impossible to see through the blinding brightness. Stars blinked in my eyes as we walked the length of the corridor, passing servants and slaves dressed in altogether too little for my own sense of modesty.

"Donald Trump eat your heart out," I chuckled to myself as we passed a particularly nubile woman covered in piercings in places best left unmentioned as she sanctified a three story high statute of the god Heka.

Alluring chamber maidens dressed in even less than nothing kneeled on either side of the door, their shaved heads tattooed with a thick mess of hieroglyphics that implied sorceries of the darkest sort. The women pulled apart a set of thick purple velvet curtains, allowing Ul'tak to pass into the inner chamber.

The Sanctum Sanctorum of Heka, god of Magic.

Stars and stones it was gaudy.

At the far side of a wide chamber a man of Middle Eastern heritage lounged upon a throne that appeared to have been cut from a giant hunk of ruby. He sat in indolence, idly watching as two humans attacked each other with swords within circle ten yards wide surrounded by a barrier glowing with the same energy as the city gate. Even at a distance it made my skin pulse with the energy of ambient magic.

I gasped in horror as one of the men in the circle made a clumsy lunge with his blade, overbalancing and exposing himself to his opponent. The fatal blow echoed around the room with a fleshy thump of metal on bone. The winner severed his opponents head and held it up in triumph to the charnel cheers of the watching Jaffa. The sound echoed with their joyous blood lust.

The human servants continued with their everyday chores in the place, paying the lethal violence no attention at all. Years of such violent displays doubtlessly left them anesthetized to their appeal. In a way their silent acceptance disturbed me far more than the blood lust of the Jaffa ever could.

I could understand anger, lust, fear, death and hunger. But apathy? Total apathy? It terrified me.

I don't know what possessed me to open up my wizard's sight, curiosity or madness. I looked out at the crowd of cheering men and their god, only to see the glowing hateful eyes of serpents staring back at me in boundless lust. They protruded from the bellies of men, wrapping round their bodies like fleshy, barbed manacles.

Heka wore a noose of serpent that curled up over the head of him like a crown, preening regally whilst he screamed in eternal horror. A river of blood flowed from Heka's robes, soaking the ground as far as the eye could see with sorrowfully sticky red blood. A million arms reached out of the river, clawing at the hem of his robes in impotent fury. They bellowed their ghostly challenges calling him murderer and demon, but they couldn't even muss the hem of his garment.

I didn't vomit, but it was a close call as I closed all three of my eyes in horror. Heka was evil, plain and simple evil.

Evil and powerful, it was a dangerous combination.

Heka, amused by the gristly spectacle clapped his hands twice and dissolved the barrier. Speaking an a voice that rumbled with inhuman power he strode forward and accepted the severed head from his kneeling supplicant, "See how my faithful obey me. He has slain the unworthy and bolstered me with his power. I am Heka, and I am merciful."

He reached down and cradled the man's head, examining the deep cuts and bruises. He waved to a golden armored jaffa, "Take him to the Sarcophagus and see to his wounds. He has done well."

The man stumbled to his feet with the Jaffa's assistance, struggling to walk on a severed hamstring. His god watched him leave in mild paternal amusement, observing him like a favored pet, "Very well indeed."

He pointed a finger at the dismembered corpse and three bolts of lightning shot out from a device on his wrist, dissolving the corpse into vapor. No ash, no char, just two chirping bursts of lightning and the body vanished into thin air.

Ul'tak grabbed me by the nape of my neck and shoved me face first to the ground as his god crossed the circle. Unprepared for the rough treatment I squawked in protest as my face hit the stone, earning me a punch to the kidney for my troubles and knocking the wind out of me.

On bended knee he put his balled fist over his heart in salute, bowing his head in reverence, "My Lord Heka. I discovered this trespasser in the badlands at the edge of the Teeth of Sokkar."

"How interesting," The Egyptian deity examined me with predatory eyes covered in thick black makeup, pulling at a long braided beard on his chin. The thick jewelry on his right hand clacked and clattered against a palm sized ruby in his fist. The gem glowed with ambient power, hinting at the sorcerous might it concealed. I swallowed nervously wondering what other magics were up his sleeve, "No matter, it will provide what it knows before it dies."

"He claims not to be a spy," Ul'tak continued, "And I believe him."

"You are too credulous my first prime," Heka tutted malevolently, "However we can discover the truth of it. There are ways of making even the tightest of tongues loosen."

"I'm not a spy," I tried to lift my head, only to get kicked in the side by a Jaffa. Spitting up a mouthful of blood I repeated myself, "My name is Harry Dresden. I'm from Chicago. I am _not_ a spy. I'm here by accident."

Heka reached down and touched the silver pentacle dangling from my neck, hissing in disgust. "A symbol of Osiris of the Ba Duat. And you claim not to be a spy?" The god laughed, a cruel echoing menace, "Unlikely."

"Hold on a second," Oh crap. This was not good, "Who gives you the right to tell me who I am? "

"A god _need_ not justify himself to a mortal ant," Heka's eyes glowed with fury, shimmering with preternatural energies, "Jaffa kill him."

"I request that he be given Tek'pa'kor to prove his honor," Ul'tak bowed his head deferentially and put himself between Heka and myself, "Let him die with honor if he is to die."

"A right of combat? For a spy? " Heka laughed uproariously in his cruel cackle, "And does the Tau'ri consent to a trial by combat, knowing the price of failure. The fight is to the death."

"You aren't exactly giving me a whole heck of a lot of options," I gritted my teeth and looked up at the Heka in defiance, "I'm not going quietly. And if possible I'm not going at all." I wouldn't be able to fight my way out past a thousand soldiers, but I might be able to take a singe Jaffa in combat. Better to rely upon the protection of old world hospitality.

God bless the predictability of ancient supernatural beasties.

"Arrogance, defiance, pride," The god waved vaguely to the raised stone circle, "Rob him of these Ul'tak. I wish for this to end. I would have another Jaffa do the deed though. Ge'mok is in need of the training."

"As you wish my Lord," Ul'tak stood, lifting me to my feet one handed. Considering that I'm about six feet tall and just shy of two hundred pounds that's no small feat.

Hundreds of tattooed faces watched us walk to the circle, eying me with mild amusement. I caught distant whispers of amusement from the Jaffa, none of them seemed to think I had a chance. Well to hell with them. It was time to show them what a Wizard of the White Council, a Warden no less, could do when backed into a corner.

"You may use any weapons you have on you Tau'ri. Once you step into the ring the barriers will rise and you will fight till one of you no longer lives," Ul'tak whispered into my ear as we went, doing his best to inform me of the rules in the seconds before the battle, "Ge'mok is not without a heart, he will allow you to wound him before he goes for the kill so that you may be buried with honor."

"And if I kill him first?" I cracked my knuckles and stretched my arms over my head, trying desperately not to notice the seven foot tall wall of pure muscle selecting weapons off the opposite wall. The man's biceps were the size of my entire torso, "What happens then?"

"It will be a shame for such foolish bravery to be extinguished," Ul'tak sighed disappointedly and quirked his brow in bemusement, "To the victor goes the prize, your life."

I pulled the glove from my mangled hand, balling the desiccated appendage into a fist, "I'll just have to make sure not to lose then."

Ul'tak incredulously watched the crippled human stride onto the stage like a conquering hero. I had to look absolutely absurd, haggard and still covered the detritus of the Darkhallow; more vagrant than fighter.

Well it's what you do that counted, not how you looked. And I had more than my share of doing left in me, "Bob, any suggestions?"

"Hit him till he doesn't move any more?" Bob's eye narrowed, focusing on the Jaffa, "Duels aren't exactly my specialty boss."

"Christ Bob," I snorted, "I could have figured that out on my own. What am I paying you for?"

"Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer," Bob hissed in reply, "I don't have the answer to every question, just the ones that matter."

"I kind of feel like this one counts," I snarled in annoyance as I watched Heka recline into his ruby seat.

The godling surveyed us from behind the barrier, reclining in his throne as he smiled and bellowed, "You who are about to die, we salute you."

The giant stepped into the ring, stamping the heel of his staff on the ground twice and bowing in salute to me as the blue energies of the barrier snapped into place. I cracked my staff in reply, tilting my heady sightly by way of reply before falling into a defensive posture.

Not that it did me any good.

With a speed entirely unfair for his size the massive man crossed the two yards between us, driving his staff into my midriff like a spear. I rolled with the impact, spinning around and cracking him across the back of the head with my own staff. The Jaffa roared in fury, jabbing backwards with the flaring silver cobra head on the bottom and catching me at my ankle in it's crook.

I had the time to yelp a surprised, "woah," before he'd flipped me onto my back and stomped a booted foot into my sternum with a kick that cracked bone audibly. My eyes bulged with pain and shock as he leaned into my fractured ribs, grinding his food backwards and forwards as he rose his staff for the killing blow, "I take no pleasure in this Tau'ri. May you find peace in the afterlife."

No more mister nice wizard. I raised my hand and tapped into the energies in my rings, splaying my fingers and shoving them upwards into Ge'mok's chest. His pity turned to astonishment as a shockwave of magical force flung him into the air, tossing him to collide with the hard stone a yard back.

I give the guy credit, he recovered from the shock of facing a wizard fast.

He rolled with the impact, tucking his body into a ball and twisting into a panful kneel before righting himself and advancing on me. He whirled his staff around his body in a complex motion that was nearly a dance, the glittering silvery metal flashing with reflections of the torchlight.

Then, without warning the end of his mace opened up like a blooming flower and a basketball sized burst of light rocketed out towards me with a thunderous squelch of energy. I raised my shield winched as the blinding force of it collided with the barrier, exploding into a thunderous burst of sound.

I ducked to avoid another two bursts of energy from the staff before screaming, "Vintas servitas."

My attacker fumbled with his weapon as an gust of sorcerous wind tried to tear it from his fingers, shouting in frustration. It gave me enough time to focus my mind and prepare what came next.

My battle magics weren't as powerful as they once had been. I hadn't used fire magic since losing my hand, even simple evocations of candle flame had been too much for me to manage. But fire wasn't the only elemental magic at my disposal.

My mentor, Ebeneezer McCoy, had insisted that I learn at least one application of earth magic. It would more or less tap me out on earth magic for the next week but given my adrenaline and my need it would have to do. I reached out to the energies around me, tapping into the ambient energies bled off by the barrier trapping us inside the circle.

As Ge'mok righted his grasp on his staff I smashed the bottom of my staff into the ground, its runes glowing red hot and smoldering sulfurously as I tapped into the power of hellfire. The stone floor split in two, widening into a cavernous maw of empty earth into which the terrified Jaffa plummeted. I swung my gnarled paw in a cutting motion across my chest and pulled apart the magics keeping the earth split.

The Jaffa screamed in incomprehensible pain as the walls of the stone pit collided in a horrible wet twisting of pulverized flesh. Utter and complete silence filled the room as the blue barrier dropped, leaving me to face Heka as what remained of his servant bubbled up through cracks in the stone circle. Wet charnel syrup pooled into a puddle at the center of the circle.

I expected Heka to be angry, annoyed, possibly even furious. But when he looked into my eyes, all I saw was hunger. I pulled away as I felt the first tugs of a soul gaze, the last thing I wanted to know was what lay behind those terrible glowing eyes.

"I trust that satisfies your test," I growled in anger. I hadn't wanted to kill Ge'mok, shouldn't have needed to kill him. Something about being forced to kill a man for some lesser god's amusement was pissing me right the hell off, "Now let me go."

"I think not," The god smiled eagerly, "I couldn't possibly part with such a promising specimen. No, I have plans for you."

"Like hell!" I growled, "You promised me my freedom."

"I promised you honor," Heka grinned predatory, "There is no greater honor than being the host to your god. Jaffa kree."

I heard a chirruping sound that reminded me of crickets echoing from behind me, and then everything faded to black. Just not my day all around, today was just awful. And tomorrow wasn't fixing to be any better.

Stars and stones I needed a vacation.


	3. Chapter 3

Getting shot hurts a lot. It's not something I'd choose to repeat but it's happened to me more than once. When it does happen I deal with it and do what I can to move on till the next thing clobbers me even worse. It's a shitty life but I make due.

In the course of my career as a wizard I've been beaten, shot, stabbed, mauled, gored, flayed, cooked, scorched, and scourged but nothing - and I mean nothing - hurt as bad as waking up from that damn lightning. Every single muscle and fiber of my body was clenched up, a fact exacerbated by the thick manacles keeping me strapped to the wall.

Hell, I had a freaking charlie horse in my spleen and I'm not even sure what that part of the body does. Hey, GED remember? Human biology isn't exactly my thing. I can tell you what parts are supposed to be on the inside and how to do basic first aid, but more that that and you're out of luck.

Peering into the near darkness of the room, I could barely see anything. What I could see didn't do much to enhance my calm. Flickering torchlight illuminated the vague outlines of ornately carved furniture, shaped into beasts and birds. Sneering jackals and ibis stared back at me through the dusky shadows, jeweled eyes sparkling with anticipatory glee in the near dark.

I breathed in, and hated myself for it. I breathed out and hated myself more as I blinked the starlight out of my eyes.

Get a grip Harry, I thought to myself. You're a wizard, you're unstoppable, you're... naked….

The jerks didn't need to take my clothes. That was just cheating.

They'd even taken my rings and shield bracelet and they'd bathed me. That was… new, even for me.

I'd been knocked out a bunch of times before, but this was the first time I woke up clean for my troubles. Now if only my ears would stop ringing it might even be a nice upgrade from the usual post-knockout capture. I could still smell the odor of flowers and perfume on my skin. And, unless I was highly mistaken, my face had been shaved.

Wait- my face and my head?

Not just my head - Oh hells bells, my everything had been shaved bald.

That was just wrong on so many levels.

I didn't know what Heka had planned for me that required me to be hairless but I damn well didn't plan to stick around and find out. I focused my magic to break the locks on my cuffs and screamed in pain. A searing sensation of pure agony shot from the manacles into my body, pulsing through me without mercy. I managed not to pass out, but just barely.

I tried to do it a second time when soft hand caressed my cheek and a beautiful voice whispered softly, "I would not do that, my host. They were made to restrain your kind."

The fallen angel ran her hands over my chest, pearly white digits glowing slightly as they caressed my muscles with delicious deliberation. Every place she touched went blissfully numb, agony dissipating under her ministrations. God it felt so good I didn't even have the heart to stop her.

"Those were created in the time before we were allowed to return to Earth, forged by the old gods to restrain your kind. Nicodemus made his thorned manacles in imitation of them." She sighed sadly. "Magic will not avail you my host. The more you try to channel, the more pain you will inflict upon yourself."

"But you could numb the pain then?" I groaned petulantly, looking for something to talk about that wouldn't draw my attention closer to the etherial woman's prominent and exposed bosom as she drew close to me, massaging my arms.

"Enough for those? In my current form?" She chided, "Unlikely, there are limits to my power."

"Let me guess?" I snorted derisively, "Call the coin, join you and we shall rule over the galaxy together as fallen angel and mortal puppet?"

"I prefer to think of it as a working partnership." Lasciel sighed irritatedly, caressing my face. "Have I done anything to earn your mistrust?"

"I've seen what happens to long term members of the Nickelheads Lash, it aint happening to me. Not while I can still draw breath." I winced in agony as she pulled back her hands and scowled at me, a hard edge working into her voice.

"That may cease to be relevant sooner than you think my host. I do not think you appreciate the gravity of your situation." Her lip curled in disgust. "The old gods were nightmares, skilled in ferromancy beyond your wildest imagining. Whatever you think of Nicodemus, I assure you Heka is worse."

"Oh come on," I groaned. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Dresden," My ears twitched at Lasciel's use of my proper name. "Fear of the Egyptian pantheon is why we were first allowed to interact with mortals after the death of the Son."

That the we in question was the cadre of fallen angels attached to a handful of silver coins needed not be said. That it scared me silly hardly needed be voiced either. "Come again?"

"My host, have you never stopped to ask why groups like the Vampire Courts came to be? Have you simply assumed that the creatures that go bump in the night have always been there?"

"Uh." I'd never even begun to consider it.

"The Drakul? The Incubus? The blood-born? The sons of Jade?" The Fallen angel leaned in and whispered into my ear, her hot breath tickling tantalizingly against my skin. "They have not. Weapons, all of them, forged to expel those who do not belong. Even they have forgotten, but the memory of the fallen is eternal. The desperate will seek what allies they may."

"What?" I squawked, agitating my neck in a way I immediately regretted.

"The usurper gods swam the stars in their husk like bodies, leathery snake-like monsters red in tooth and claw. Monstrous scavengers of the ruins of the children of Eden. They conquered all creatures in the sky, slaughtering the things they met till they came to a land touched by the first blood of Eden," The Angel spoke clinically. "And they found the fruits of Eden, the children of the first blood. "

"Fruits of eden." I sighed. "Want to give me the cliffs notes on that one Lash?"

"The Old Gods adore mortal bodies." Lasciel sighed. "They were taken with a deep lust for manflesh."

"Lusted for?" I blanched, looking down at my nude form.

"Not that way my host." She snorted in amusement at my relieved expression. "Don't get too relaxed. He still desires your flesh, but as his host. You are far preferable to his current mortal man flesh or even the flesh of their nigh immortal monsters."

"Uh… why would a 'nigh-immortal' creature be a worse host than humans? It's not like we -" I swore as it hit me. "Hell's bells and buckets of blood. Wizards, they want wizards."

"Yes my host." She smiled approvingly. "Precisely. And you know what is coming. "

The soul gaze I'd nearly been drawn into with Heka played back across my mind. Oh my god, the soul of his host was still there, trapped like Rasmussen had been. A slave to his own body, it was a fate I didn't care to contemplate.

"So why haven't they been back if they wanted us so much?" I queried, shivering as breeze swept past a part of me not used to breezes. "If we're so ideal?"

"Wizards are long lived stock, but even the talents of the usurpers gods can only extend the lives of their shells so long. They do not have the fires of hell or creation burning in their veins. What wizards they took were hollow and insane after the first millennia, useless husks that had to be replaced." A superior note of satisfaction eked into her voice at the idea of the 'usurper gods' being inferior. "By which time there were too many predators seeded within the mortal races, too many hidden wizards to control. They forfeited the mortal realms for their hiding places in the shadow of stars and hidden realms of creation. But their lust continues long after for the forbidden fruit."

"Lash what are you saying?" I swallowed nervously.

"Dresden, today you will become a host. " The fallen Angel's lip curled in satisfaction. "To me or to the usurper but it will happen."

"Oh fuck that!" I growled, twisting in my bindings till the pain became too much and I hung there, panting. Lash stood there in her Roman tunic, arms crossed beneath her generous bosom, chuckling to herself. To hell with her, I wasn't anybody's sock puppet.

I was so busy glaring at her and trying to figure a way out of the room that I hadn't even noticed that we weren't alone any more. Three women walked into the room carrying clay pots, naked as the day they were born. Carmel skinned and tattooed with sweeping patterns of ornate hieroglyphs that led up to a thick gold collar covered in hanging hunks of jade, they sauntered over to me, chanting in high pitched unison as they approached me.

"Uh, hi." So it wasn't my most articulate moment, sue me.

They ignored me, busying themselves with paintbrushes and clay pots. They mixed tones of henna from them and approached me with brushes, continuing their chant. Ritual magic, it had to be.

"Get away from me, You slutty knock-off Cleopatra wannabes!" I snarled, trying to knee them away from me.

The shackles binding my arms and legs yanked back hard, propelled by some unseen force, stretching my limbs tight to prevent their motion. I cursed at them, screaming the most vile and anatomically impractical obscenities I could think of as I struggled to shift my chest to prevent them from finishing the ritual symbols.

The lead woman scowled at me and pulled a long rod from the wall. She pressed it against my chest and pushed forward. With an energetic orange crackling burst of power that set my teeth on edge the device pulsed through my body, numbing my muscles beyond use. I fell slack in my shackles, only my eyes able to move under their own power.

At least nothing hurt any more.

Lasciel's shadow wandered around the women, observing their ornate patterns of painted henna. She chuckled to herself in amusement, "Must you endure this on principal alone? Does it serve a purpose to be degraded like this? Take the power that is yours, summon me!"

"Gufynae guuu," I slurred though my numb lips and tongue, vainly willing my chest to move away from the henna brush. The beginnings of an intricate helix of wrapped serpents now wove it's way down my chest.

"You are a fool my host," Lash growled in desperate irritation. "Summon the coin! Summon it!"

My vision swam in agony as I tried to will the cuffs to open, causing another burst of pain from the cuffs powerful enough to knock me senseless, causing the women to yelp satisfyingly as they were caught peripherally within it. I couldn't say how long I was out, but by the time my eyes opened again the women had already finished their task. My body was entirely covered in intricate patterns of henna, ritualistic markings of very alarming portent.

The trio kneeled on the ground before me, heads bowed in deferential silence. I suppose it wouldn't have been appropriate for them to speak now that they were in the presence of their god.

Heka towered above them, rubbing at his bare chest with his ornately jeweled hands as he surveyed my body, "Good, good. This pleases me. You have done well for your god. A worthy avatar of my magnificence."

"A porto-john isn't as full of it as you are." I mumbled through tingling lips. "Do you actually just read from the handbook of douchey villain phrases or is this a custom brand of obvious evil?"

He chuckled idly as he stared into my groggily squinted eyes, "You're awake already?"

"What can I say." I spat a messy glob of phlegm on the ground, lamentably missing his feet. "Didn't want to miss the show."

"Defiant," The man ran a jewelry encrusted finger tipped in an ivory claw over curves of my chest and down to my belly button, surveying me with an almost hungry gaze. "How amusing. A fine specimen but I wonder -" He snapped his fingers waving at my waist. "Sarna, I need to examine this."

The closest of the three women crawled across the floor and between my legs, taking me in her mouth. I tried to think of baseball, old people, anything that wasn't the first person touching me since Susan but my id was having none of that. Contrary to every signal I sent his way, my man parts were entirely in favor of this new development.

And let's be honest, there are only so many baseball statistics that one can think of in a crisis.

An awkwardly enjoyable moment passed before the servant was ripped from me by her master, tossing her to the floor roughly by her hair so that he could observe the results. She cracked hard against the tile, crying out in surprise. Oblivious to her pain the god tutted sadly, "I suppose even the gods cannot have everything."

"Fuck you king Tut!," I yelled in outrage, earning a backhanded smack for my snark.

"I do not tolerate that from mere mortals."

"Deal with it asshole."

He leaned up close to my naked body, pressing himself against me as he whispered into my ear, "I will enjoy crushing you Dre'su'den. Of the host nothing remains"

He bowed down to the nape of my neck, licking it before widening his jaw and extending his - tongue?

Not like any tongue I'd ever seen.

A fanged serpent jutted out of the man's mouth, waving in the air hissing reedily .

ripping into my neck and burrowing into my skin. The human shell of heka fell to the ground as the foot long serpent swam through muscle and flesh, digging through me like an eel at the bottom of a river bed.

I'd like to say that I fought back, that I said something clever, or even that I'd had a moment to feel sad for myself but I was too busy screaming. I screamed myself ragged till the twisting serpent coiled round my back and spine burrowing into my head. I screamed so loud that it started to feel like it was a different person screaming, like I was just watching a movie.

And then it was another person yelling and I was a guest in someone else's body. My eyes shifted, my lips moved, my chest rose and fell but I was not responsible for any of it. I screamed louder but my mouth refused to move under my own power, my body was no longer my own.

Memories of my apprenticeship whipped past me, vague visions of Ebenezer and Justin teaching me to manipulate the elements. My joy at first being able to summon the wind, a thousand times over a thousand ways I practiced to use that skill ran through me in an instant.

And a set of memories alien to me shoved their way into my mind, nightmares I could not escape. Blackness, blind emptiness, Murder, violation, blood sacrifice and power, and endless and insatiable need for power. A million times a million holocaust and they were all mine.

My hand reached out towards a torch on the wall and a voice that was not my own yelled, "Vintas servitas!" Summoning the torch into my outstretched hand.

The not-me looked at the torch and whooped with joy. A feeling of detached happiness washed across me from his distant mind.

"Yes!" I felt myself saying. "I am at last whole! I am at last perfect. Let Sokkar and the other gods try to defy me now. I am Heka! I am king of all Gods! I will ascend as Anubis before me!"

The me that was not me snapped my fingers, summoning the servants to strip the clothing and jewelry from the sobbing man who had once been a god. He was a gibbering shell of a man, shaking and whispering to himself, repeating a word over and over. "Free, free, free…." as though refusing to believe it.

The cool material of the many ornate bracelets and rings slid ominously over my skin, tantalizing ripples of power emanating from them. Magical foci for energy, powerful, ancient and cruel they throbbed with generations of malice. Millennia of ill use had poured a well of suffering into their ambient power reserve.

I looked down at the man, and a disgust that was not my own washed across my mind. Look at that thing, useless, weak, obsolete, whimpering and ungrateful. It should be thrilled to have been part of a god, part of the wonder of creation. But it was not, it was just a shell of flesh, a disposable meat sack that had lasted past it's prime. It was a liability, thought the other mind against my will.

My arm, controlled by the god, pointed to the man and a burst of will from the evil not-mind. Three bursts of lightning shot out, obliterating the man from existence. Satisfaction rumbled past me, oblivious to my disgust. My lips spoke words I knew to be a lie, "I pass you on to the next world, to glory."

"To paradise," replied the women eagerly anticipating their reward. The not mind eyed them hungrily, the old form had not been well suited for libidinal recreation and the new form was starved for it. Sake the flesh and dispose of the chattel after, for none who touch a god should ever be with another. Sarna, yes she would do nicely.

The not-mind would dispose of Sarna for her carnal knowledge of the Dre'su'den anyway.

The doe-eyed Sarna stared reverently at my feet, knowing what came next, knowing it would end her life but resigned to accept her fate. She breathed heavily with the fear and lust the not-mind preferred from it's partners, it's prey. A lust that I pray to god was not my own stirred in my loins as the not-mind grabbed her by the hair, intent upon using her roughly. The not mind-smiled eagerly, whispering in a terrifying hungry moan, "Prepare to worship your god."

A feminine curse of disgust from a phantom source was the only warning Heka got from an extremely pissed off fallen angel.

"Usurper!" Howled a feminine voice as an invisible hand grasped at my throat, clamping down too hard to breathe and forcing me to my knees. "Pretender! Coward! He. is. mine."

Heka clawed at the invisible attacker in confusion, searching through my memories to explain what was happening to him. Thousands of memories came to play but no memories of a tunic clad beauty came to mind, no memories of silver coins, and a whispered titter of amusement echoed in my ear as a brief ray of hope popped into my mind.

His servants backed away from him in fear, screaming for the guards as their god howled in pain fighting off an invisible attacker.

Was I saved? Could Lasciel expel Heka?

"No my host," a sad whisper hissed into my mind even as a louder voice screamed "Defiler, betrayer, worm!" and a thousand phantom wounds tore at the god in imitation of every injury I'd ever received. "I can only delay the inevitable."

A tunic clad woman appeared behind me, finitely giving the furious god a target. My eyes widened in horror as Heka fired his lightning at the apparition of Lasciel, only for it to dissipate across her chest. The apparition waved it's hands, inflicting new phantom pains upon my body; broken bones, and gunshots, lacerations and flaying all hammering at the mind of my captor. I had a wide range of memories to choose from, each more painful than the last.

What can I say? I've had a busy life.

The whisper turned desperate, "Harry, please I cannot hide your mind and my shadow forever. You must summon the coin. You must summon the coin before it is too late."

"There has to be something," I willed at her. "Can you create another illusion like you did in the apartment building? Convince him that he's better off leaving me than staying."

"It's taking all that I have to ensure we can speak properly. " She snarled as time seemed to slow to a stop around us, everything moving like something out of the matrix. The lightning streams crawled lazily across the room towards her apparition.

I lost myself for a moment in the revelation that Lash could apparently stop time.

"Time does not exist. to keep you conscious and I've sped up your mind so that we can have this conversation. If I keep it up for too long it will cause an aneurism and kill you." A pained tone entered the whisper.

Well, ok at least that made sense, the magic required in stopping or reversing time would have been insane, and it's not like we use our entire brain's capacity to -

"Dresden," Barked Lash, "Focus."

Oh right, enslaved by an Egyptian god. Got to keep in the moment. I mentally imitated a sigh, knowing that another offer I couldn't refuse was in my near future.

The whisper screamed in exasperation, "You are impossible my host"

Eh, everybody has a skill.

"Heka believes your other is the only part of your mind, once he realizes that there are two more he will crush us. Summon the coin wizard summon the coin or accept oblivion there are no other options."

I could summon it, become one of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. Power to free myself, power to crush the Jaffa, power perhaps even to get back home. But that power would come at a price. I would be exchanging one monstrous master for another and though Lash talked a good game it didn't take a genius to figure out that I'd be back at square one before I knew it. Back to being a sock-puppet for evil.

"No." I refused her, a deep sense of resignation seeping into me.

Whatever power she had over Heka was slipping, and fast. The bolts of lightning were already moving at a brisk clip," I cannot keep this up forever wizard."

Hey lady, don't rush a wizard when he's planning a miracle or you get a shitty miracle.

"Must you prolong this?" Lash hissed in pain. The effort of suppressing Heka was getting to her.

If I submitted to either of them I would be surrendering who I was, who I wanted to be, to a monster. And I would become a monster with them. That wasn't going to happen. Not now, not ever. I would not become a weapon for some supernatural nut job with a god complex.

"Please," begged Lash. "Please let me help you. I don't want you to live as a slave to this monster for eternity."

Eternity was a long time, even for a wizard.

"Harry, in order to subdue you he will crush me."

And then me with her.

"Then summon the coin. Accommodations can be made, agreements can be reached. It is a better option."

A better option, well she was the devil I knew in every possible sense of the word. And as long as I followed her every whim we'd get along swimmingly. Never mind that she'd be asking me to bring about the apocalypse on a weekly basis.

"But you would be alive. Not just some zombie moving at the will of a pretender to power."

No, I would be a puppet to actual hellish power.

"Do you have a choice?"

It took a real effort of will to think, "No, no I don't." towards the Denarian.

"Then hurry, focus on the coin in your mind -"

No, that wasn't an option.

"Then what can you mean to - Harry no!"

It was the only way out.

"Harry, I - I can't let you do this. It's -."

Yes, it would be.

"She, she would never forgive me for allowing you to - I could never go back."

I didn't intend for that to be an option for either of us. She would be coming along for the ride.

A very human twinge of fear worked it's way into her voice, "I… I don't want to die."

Living was nice. I was particularly fond of being alive, sort of a hobby of mine. But sometimes knowing when to end is as important as knowing how to live. And it was time to end, for all three of us.

"I can't let you do that Harry. You know I can stop you."

"No, I don't Lash." I willed at her. "And neither do you. We're weak, both of us. And you can't make me summon the coin. But I can have my dignity, and I can have my peace. Let me have that Lash. Let me do what's right one last time."

"I - She..." Lash's voice took on an almost childish voice of resentment, the phantom image of Lasciel torturing Heka synching with her speech in wonder and a deep note of sadness that hurt as much as anything else that day, "We - don't deserve you."

Taking that as consent I focused on the task at hand, rushing to do the impossible as time sped back into normalcy. Heka's incoherent rage pumped through me as wave of pure will collided with my own mind, thrusting towards what remained of my mind.

He was too late.

Heka had taken my voice, he had taken my body, he had taken my foci, my staff, my cloak, and my memories but I was still a wizard dammit. I still had my will.

Magic isn't about the words or the rituals or the foci or any of the showy things that we wizards do to speed things up. Ultimately magic is all about intent and resolve. I forced myself to remember the things I'd seen in Heka's mind, centuries of rape and death. Every single sobbing and suffering face I could stand till I knew, not just thought but knew I could do what had to be done. My nostrils filled with the familiar scent of sulfurous hellfire as I focused on the wriggling snake within my own body, wrapped in my head and neck, and willed a scalpel of spite at the god.

I tapped into my own memories, to a memory of a dark basement and the one pain that Lasciel couldn't tap into when she'd been throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Heka, the one memory I repressed even from myself. The reason my hand was a charred hunk of meat, I latched onto the fear I'd even refused to admit to myself.

My fear of fire.

I remembered the terrible flames as I dug deep into the of power in my own will, latching onto the trapped well of suffering emanating from the god's own foci.

I thought the words of power, turning the simple spell I used to light candles into a surgical weapon, "Flickum bicus"

It hurt. Oh God but it hurt as the confused god boiled alive within my skull, burning as the sinews of his body were used for tallow along with my own. My neck and skull ripped apart messily as the intruder's body from the force of my curse, tearing my body beyond repair as the foot long serpent cooked alive. It was suicide, plain and simple.

But as I crumpled to the floor, limply clutching at the ragged meat of my larynx, I was content.

I won.

I was free.

The servants, not privy to any of what had been going on, continued to scream for the Jaffa to save their god. I watched their attempts to push the organs back in my body as the Angelic apparition of Lasciel crouched down next to me. Her soft blond tresses buried in my chest, soaking with my blood as the woman hugged me in a way that would have been agonizing had she been real. She held me and sobbed as the darkness drew closer, the end would come for both of us.

It was nice to have someone who cared there for me, even if she was imaginary.

And on that though I, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, died doing the right thing.

At least I hadn't died alone.

A/N: As always feel free to point out any spelling and grammar issues you see.


	4. Chapter 4

Heaven was narrower than I'd expected.

No choir of angels, no pearly gates, there wasn't really much of anything. Just an eight by three by four glowing white box, devoid of any thing except a film of mucous like white fluid covering my entire body.

It would have been kind of gross if it didn't feel so nice. The space hummed with the Turkic thumping of my heart as I relaxed into the calming oblivion of the light. The collected tension of decades was gone, my aches and pains wiped clean. I couldn't move more than a few inches in any direction, but then again I didn't actually want to. Within this floating womb I wanted for nothing.

As afterlives went, it was pretty nice. Perhaps a bit boring, but nice. No real sense of time or urgency, no pain, I guess I could work with this. An eternity of full body Novocain? It could be way, way worse.

As afterlives went, it was pretty good.

"Your imagination is sadly limited, my host."

I sat up in surprise at the fallen angel's voice, banging my head against the ceiling hard and sweating loudly. The sharp concussive sensation melted away, as painless as it was startling.

"Do try to keep yourself in one piece," she chided exasperatedly. "There is no need for more self flagellation."

Oh come on! What had I done to deserve am eternity in a box with a freaking fallen Angel? I groaned, trying to ignore a laundry list of various sins to my name that probably warranted that exact punishment. So I wasn't perfect, sue me. Buy even for me that felt excessive.

Heck I died for a good cause didn't I.

"Really my host? You haven't worked it out guy yet?" Lash tittered in amusement.

No, I hadn't. So I'm not perfect, alright? Jeeze Louise, cut the dead wizard a break. I've earned a bit of peace in the hereafter.

Lash snorted in a way that seemed to undignified for an angel, even a fallen one, before bursting into a fit of the giggles.

Now that was just rude.

"Honestly my host..." She hiccuped, stifling her mirth. "You really must learn to see the transparently obvious with more clarity. Do you honestly believe that you're bound for a place where I-" she corrected herself abruptly, "- she can reach you. "

Holy pronouns batman, that was new. The shadow was referring to herself as a different person from the fallen... Huh?

"You aren't dead, my host." Lash snapped irritatedly.

OK Harry, the pronoun thing was a touchy subject, table that one for later. Wait? How was I not dead? Last I checked blowing up a god with the force of a freaking claymore whilst the aforementioned deity was piggybacking on your freaking spine tended to cause a terminal case if exploding head. Between the blood loss, the brain trauma, and the heat I should be D-E-D dead.

Wizards are tougher than mortals are but even we react badly to blowing ourselves up from the inside. And yet, here I was, talking, thinking - alive. It was impossible.

"Of course you died wizard," The shadow clipped her tones patronizingly, as one might address a particularly slow child. "You were excessively thorough in your attempts to end your own life."

Well that made things clear as mud.

"Does this energy not feel familiar to you my host? Have you not felt it before?"

Uh. Actually, come to think of it it did seem familiar - but where - oh hells bells, no!

"Hells bells yes, my host. Hell's bells yes."

The cool feeling of contentment swaddling my entire body was something it felt recently before, when it had been forced upon me by Bizzaro Bob. It was the touch of death, the caress of necromancy. A seductive kiss of evil, horrible unlife.

Holy shit! I wasn't freaking dead.

No, no - groaned to myself in desperation - no, no, no, no, NO! This was bad. This was so bad it defied belief.

Necromancy wasn't just black magic, it was the black magic. It was the number one no-no on the white councils shit list. Killing with magic might be the wizard's first law, buy fucking with death held a special place of universal despise.

And it was back because of it. I'd been brought back from - wait? Oh, Hell's bells...

Had Heka been revived as well?

A jolt of fear ran up my spine as I tried to feel the oily touch of the Egyptian deity. I felt nothing, but then would I?

"No," growled the fallen in satisfaction, a sadistic tone of glee dancing in her voice. "Not while they were in the casket. The pretenders seem to delight in the terror of their hosts, allowing them control in these brief moments of purgatory. But fear not, my host. The usurper is quite dead. Gone to whatever afterlife his kind endure. His ashes are far from the resurrection sarcophagus."

Sarcophagus? Like Sarcophagus-sarcophagus? Mummies, curses, the whole nine yards sort of sarcophagus? That was... awesome! Tacky, but freaking awesome.

"Its a theme," Lash sounded unimpressed. "The usurper's are nothing if not fond of tradition and ritual. They draw authority from ceremony."

How long had I been dead for? It was an odds to imagine that I essential hadn't been for a while. It was hard to imagine not well - being. I was used to "being". I was good at it. I had a lot of practice living. Not living was just... weird.

"Hours perhaps? I only live when you do my host." The shadow pondered the matter for a moment. " Yes, only a matter of hours. They would not have waited long to help you."

Oh... that was good. Then who brought me back?

You know what, to heck with who - How? Necromancy wasn't something you could just do on the spot. It took power, serious magical oomph, to even start to resurrect the dead. Just bringing back a mindless servant like a zombie or a ghost was hard and that could take a shitload of prep-time. I couldn't even begin to imagine the power necessary to drag a intact soul back to its body from the afterlife hours after it died.

We were talking old school magic, the sort that was rooted in blood and death and suffering. The sort of magic where sacrificing virgins was probably one of the less squicky parts of the ritual.

"The rules of moral magics are fluid my host. A sacrifice of power is not necessarily a sacrifice of innocence. The usurper's knowledge is stolen from the bones of the Eden that was, bastardized remnants though they may be the ferromancies of Eden are not bound by the rules you know," she tutted in annoyance, possibly because she couldn't outright dismiss their efficacy. " Their items are largely a collection of ritual objects and ancient sciences. The mortal servants of the usurper's understand no more that you understand the internal workings of your television, but activating it's necromantic powers only requires minimal talent with the ritual."

"But why save me and not him?" I asked the obvious question.

I felt the tingling impression of Lasciel's haughty smirk, "Because, my dear host, he only told them part of the rituals workings to prevent any one of his followers from growing too powerful."

So I was alive because Heka was too much of an untrusting prick to explain how to save his life? Thank God for arrogant assholes!

"Yes, He did seem determined to make most of creation in His us own image, didn't He?" Lash spoke in a voice of millennial exhaustion.

Did lasciel just crack a joke? A blasphemous one, but an actual joke? Miracles do happen.

"I an not without humor, my host. Though I suspect the legion of Jaffa outside the sarcophagus are not of equal cheer," she grunted in discomfort. "I must- I must rest- I've extended my powers beyond what I was designed for. I must recover, regroup."

OK, I thought back, keenly aware that I was naked, unarmed, and soon to be outnumbered by a whole mess of angry non-humans. Uh, what do I do?

"Don't die," she grunted unhelpfully, her voice sleepy and mellow as the roof to the sarcophagus parted and a chill whipped past my naked privates.

I put on my the most wizardly scowl I could manage and stood up, pooling add much of my energies so that I could overcome a room full of Jaffa. I screamed a challenge at the top of my lungs as I came face to face with - uh - with and what appeared to be a boy in his teens and a serving girl in a decidedly revealing garment of sheer silk.

The pair of them nether flinched in surprise at my outburst note did they willingly make contact with my eyes, standing at attention with a basin of soapy water and a clean towel in their arms.

I stood there awkwardly dripping mucus down into the floor with my fists raised like a boxer, before lowering them and saying, "Uh... Hi." because I had took start somewhere after all.

The voice that came out of my throat was not the deep baritone I've had for most of my life. it was harsh, angry, metallic. It was the voice of the dead god. I guess not every part of him got turned extra crispy.

"Do you wish for us to bathe you milord?" The young woman whispered, "or shall we bring one of your playthings first?" Her voice hitched with a barely contained note of fear, "Or would this unworthy one better suit your tastes today."

Memories rammed into the forefront of my mind, lust, pain, suffering - the memories of Heka's favored brand of malicious sporting of the flesh. Looking at the terrified young girl I knew that it was within my power to take what I wanted, what I needed out of her body. I could feel her writhing beneath me as I bit, ripped and tore at her, using her for my amusement and then breaking her so that no other could have her. I felt the predatory need to dominate, to use, to command, throbbing in my mind.

I felt a phantom sensation of fingers dragging the horrible urges to a dark corner of my mind, with an angry whisper of "oh no you don't" that was gone as fast as it had came.

Lash didn't want Heka to even begin to have a place in my mind.

Fine, neither did I.

"Milord" the woman flinched in fear, unsure how to interpret my confused expression. I grabbed the towel from her and wiping the vicious fluid from myself. The woman squealed in a tone as baffled as it was terrified.

"My...lord?" Probed the confused young man, his voice too high pitched for his age. I flinched briefly in sympathetic pain, the boy was an eunuch. Poor kid.

He continued in his high pitched fearful whisper, "Are you well milord?"

He wanted to think I was his god? Fine. He could get his god some pants.

"Where are my clothes?" I asked in the most non threatening voice I could muster, the metallic booming edge to my voice echoing within the high ceilinged chamber. Ok, so the new Darth Dresden voice was kind of cool... I admit it. Though what it meant about me I really didn't want to know.

I tabled that freak out for later as I growled, "Clothes." In my mechanical basso.

The woman approached me with an elegant garment of silk and ivory, a robe for for a king. Any one of the thumb sized rugby buttons might have been worth a year of my salary. Jesus, Heka's wardrobe had to be worth the GDP of most countries.

And I wanted none of it. "Not these clothes. My hosts' clothes."

"Milord?" The eunuch shook his head in confusion.

"Where are they?"

"You- "the woman swallowed fearfully " - you ordered them destroyed milord. Nothing of the host remains by your decree."

My things... Gone... My coat, my pendant, my staff... Oh God, Bob! I was screaming before I knew it, towering over Heka's cowering servants in incoherent fury. Bob was my oldest friend, the closest thing I'd had to family for newly a decade. He couldn't be dead, he just couldn't.

"They might still be in storage milord!" The eunuch prostrated himself on the floor in terror. "I- we- the servants were only tasked with that duty this morning. It might not have come to pass."

"Take me there. Now!" My blood boiled and rage flashed across my eyes, a slight tingle of power sparkling across my vision. OK, I needed to start making list of weird holdovers from Heka's possession. Vader voice? Check. Glowing eyes? Double check.

I pulled the robe over myself, marching behind the eunuch as he scurried forward, heading down the gaudy halls of the place of the now dead god. Servants averted their eyes and soldiers saluted me as I passed them, wary of their God's ire.

I was too angry to care much. Blood pounded in my ears, setting a furious tempo to my already long shanked strides. the eunuch actually broke into a sprint to keep up with me as I rushed forward, heading for what I knew to be the armory. I don't know how I knew it was the armory and I don't know how I knew the combination to open the door, but I did.

Half naked and still dripping viscous fluid from beneath the hem of my doubtlessly soiled robe, I howled in horror as I watched a Jaffa servant toss my clothes into foundry at the center of the armory.

"Stop!" I pleaded in horror. "Please stop!"

The pair of Jaffa froze in place, not sure how to interpret their "god's" sobbing cry of despair. I rushed over to the box of my things, shoving them your of the way bodily as I lifted the familiar form of a rune covered skull into the air. I hugged it to my chest as I choked in relief. "You're OK!"

The Jaffa were understandably confused, but decades of dealing with the capricious whims of their god had apparently trained them to keep a decent poker face. Though not, apparently, good enough to conceal their surprise when a disembodied skull stared talking back.

"Its about time you came to get me! I was afraid one of these bozos was going to cremate me," Bob sighed in relief, starting up at me with his flickering eye lights. " And what's with the voice? I thought that came bundled with a plus one in the noggin."

"Wait? You know its me?" I blinked in surprise.

"Of course I do, you're not exactly making with the whole seig heil Heka." Bob said in a voice of mild irritation that did nothing to conceal his pleasure at knowing more than I, "Gods don't say please, and they don't forget to button the front of their robes. '"

I looked down and yelped in embarrassment, using the hand not holding the skull to tie the garment shut. "Yeah, well, I was in a bit of a hurry. They had to bring me back to life."

"Come again?" Bob blinked in shock.

"Dead then not dead," I shrugged. "I'm sort of winging it at this point. I didn't have much of a plan past dying. Didn't think I'd need one."

"You're too sane for the lesser undead," Bob tutted in contemplation, teeth wiggling contemplatively. "And you're not a Litche or a hemonculous .. I would see... You... You're alive? Actually alive? That's -" Bob clacked his teeth together in irritation "- that's not supposed to be possible. You're not supposed to come back that fresh, even if you do come back."

"Hey," I barked irritatedly. "Not seeing the downside."

"There's always a downside boss. That's the point of most magic. It's an exchange. Something has to be spent to get something else." He sighed. "Just try to survive when the other shoe drops, eh sahib? I don't fancy another trip to the cremation room."

"Fancy?" I teased, "You don't fancy it?"

"Oh shut up Harry, the natives are getting restless," Bob narrowed his eyes, darting back and forth between the confused looking Jaffa and sizing up biceps the width of my torso. "And I'm thinking they've got a leg up on you oh wizardly - Wait? Why are you bald?"

"Oh come on," I ran my hand over my head in annoyance, "That's just not freaking fair."

"Milord?" Hedged the nervous voice of the Eunuch. His eyes were wide with genuine fear as he stated into the skull's flaming eyes. "What manner of monster is that?"

Holy crap this had to be freaking terrifying for everyone else in the room. The Jaffa were doing a decent job of not totally freaking out as their god had a conversation with a severed head in some unknown language, but the eunuch was just short of pissing himself in fear. To the uninitiated, Bob was not exactly normal.

"He is a spirit of learning," I replied in the Goa'uld language. "A friend who means you no harm, my oldest friend."

I handed the skull to the Eunuch with a warning to be careful with it as I looked into the box and sighed disappointedly. He stared into the skulls burning eyes in terror as I took stock of what I still had to my name.

Bob carried on chatting animatedly in English, "Harry this guy is marked as a slave. When did you get slaves? Are we keeping slaves now? I'm still hazy on the whole "good" and "evil" thing but I was pretty sure keeping slaves was a no-no."

"It's a temporary situation Bob," I replied, furious at what I found. It wasn't as bad as it might have been I supposed. My clothes were gone, but after all the injuries and grit of the Darkhallow I was probably going to just have to burn them anyway. I still had my mother's silver pentacle, my rings, my shield bracelet and my spell enhanced coat, even the gray cloak and cowl of the wardens but my staff had not been so lucky. The burnt remnants of the wooden shaft, covered in traditional ozark folk art, smoldered in the heart of the forge, crackling with bursts of electricity as the runes imbued along it were broken.

Oh that was just perfect.

"Fuck," I yelled at the top of my lungs in the Goa'uld language, causing the Jaffa to jerk in fear, "Fucking shit fuck of a self important shitting fuck head. I cannot believe that prick burned my staff."

"You ordered it milord," The confused Jaffa to my left replied, looking desperately to the Eunuch for confirmation, "It was your will… I - I - I only meant to obey."

"Not you skippy, him." I snarled in irritation, pointing at my head. He blinked in confusion as I busied myself with the job of putting on my shield bracelet and rings and tying my mother's sliver pentacle back around my neck, muttering under my breath in English. "That self important prickish self-made moron of an Egyptian dime store deity wrecked my freaking staff."

"My lord is - I mean to say that you - but -?" The Eunuch blinked in confusion, looking up from the ground as far as he dared without making eye contact. He waved to the Jaffa, barking orders at them in an attempt to appease his irrationally irritated god, "Bring our god his armor and staff!"

Eager to show their loyalty the Jaffa pair rushed over to a thick ebony wardrobe inlaid with the wrapped serpents of Heka, virtually tripping over each other in their haste to appease me. The Eunuch continued to bow deeply, holding the skull above his head reverently as he spoke at my feet. "Master Ul'tak commissioned them to resize your armor for your new body, as well as your new staff of office. It is to the specifications you requested."

The wardrobe opened onto a mannequin of my own substantial height, accurate for my girth and overall lankiness. Dull red metal flecked with black reflected the firelight in odious menace on it's angular carapace-like protrusions of plate, contrasting with the black ringlets of skirted mail weaved into rich black leather at the joints. Where the armor of the Jaffa was rounded and practical this was obviously designed for someone who wanted to look as god damn scary as they could manage.

Heka had believed that he was going to be the biggest badass on the block when he got my body and he picked an armor to match it, complete with talon like hooks tipping his fingers.

Sure it was armor as designed by the Evil Overlord school of fashion but given the choice between it and my current outfit of a soiled kimono, I was going to go with the armor. "Uh, yeah, that will work."

It felt weird stripping naked in front of three strangers. I felt even weirder having the aforementioned strangers worshiping me as they helped me put on the armor. But between chants of purification and some very odd places for armor to fasten, we managed to get me into the Jaffa made armor.

It was… comfortable? Armor wasn't comfortable. Heavy? Yes. Impractical? Sometimes. Gaudy? Usually. But armor wasn't comfortable, it was a rule or something.

Michael's armor was so heavy I could barely lift it but this stuff was almost not even there. I barely even felt it on my body, it was as light as any jacket I'd ever worn though Heka's memories gave me the dull sense that it was more than sufficient to stop a blade or an arrow. Though not, I suspected, the discharge of the lightning weapon now strapped to my left wrist or the ruby foci in the palm of my right hand… or the freaking forcefield I had strapped to my wrist. That memory couldn't be right… could it?

Hot damn I had an honest to god forcefield.

The foci were tinged with that same dull menace of the ones I'd used to fry Heka, centuries of misuse corrupting them as much as empowering them. But they were empowered, boy howdy were they empowered. I opened my wizard's sight to stare at my wrists and flinched at the searing brightness of it, closing my sight as quickly as I'd started it. My arms were no longer flesh, but constructs of crystal and coruscating lightning, weaved together with gears and pistons covered in egyptian writings and runes in languages I did not recognize.

"Nice threads boss," Bob wolf whistled jokingly. "Going crusading later?"

I turned my head to return his snark, accidentally activating the armor's built in helmet. Armor snapped into place out of nowhere around my head and face, a holographic display appearing over the black surface in front of me. Bob yelped in surprise, "Holy moley! Harry that was… that was awesome!"

I turned to one of the polished shields hanging along the wall and came face to mask with myself. The face was not my own, but a blank-faced golden mask, complete with glowing ruby eyes and a sloping set of black cable braids leading down into the neck of my armor. An icon of raised arms on either side of a coiled snake sat dead center in the mask's forehead, the symbol of Heka.

Twisting my chin again, I found the switch to retract the helmet. I didn't like wearing the symbol of the Goa'uld marking me as his property, as his body, and essentially as him. I pulled my sorcerously enhanced jacket and grey cloak over the armor, obscuring the symbols of the dead god from view. I could only barely make out the outline of the armor beneath the jacket and cowl, other than the bald head I more or less recognized the man staring back at me.

My face looked too young by about ten years without the dull outlines of scars and scrapes I'd picked up over the years. Come to think of it I looked like Thomas. The preternatural predatory edge of sexuality my Incubus brother always exhumed wasn't there but without the sort of wear and tear one normally accrued with age I seemed more like a brother and less like an older cousin. Pulling the glove off my crippled hand as the extent of the sarcophagus' effects on my body registered in my conscious mind I whooped in glee, staring at an entirely unharmed appendage. With the exception of the angelic sigil branded into the palm of my skin there was no sign that the Black Court of Vampire had ever wounded me.

I was whole. That was almost worth the trouble of dying.

"Does it please you my lord?" The Eunuch asked as he handed me a heavy staff forged from some metal I couldn't even begin to identify. It was one of the quarterstaffs favored by the Jaffa, oblong protrusions jutting from each end. "Or is something else more fitting of a god?"

As I accepted the staff and felt the slight tingle of power of it's core. A foci, like the gem that Heka had used, I recognized the closed blossom at it's tip as the weapon used by the Jaffa I'd slain. It wasn't my staff, I held no emotional contact with it, but it would be serviceable in the interim.

I reached out for Bob the Skull, cradling my sarcastic companion as I replied, "Heka is dead."

"Yes my lord Heka." The Eunuch replied, bowing deeply. "If my lord Heka says so. Dead and reborn."

"No, just dead," I replied, turning my back on the Eunuch and walking out of the armory. "I'm - I'm new."

The Jaffa fell into a protective march behind me and the Eunuch as I walked down the most likely looking corridor to lead to the outside. The familiar nagging tug of memory told me that it was the direction I needed to go in, though I couldn't even begin to say why. The Eunuch continued to follow me, head bowed, probing to see how he could best serve his "god."

"I do not understand my lord. You stand here before us in flesh and blood. You are alive my lord god Heka, showering us with your resplendence."

"Look - I don't mean to burst your bubble, uh, what is your name?" I replied to the Eunuch. "You, uh, do have a name right?"

"Amun milord, it is the name you gave me when you took me from my parents at birth to become your Lo'Tar," The Eunuch replied in a hurt voice. "I have served you since I was five."

"No, you served Heka for decades. And Heka has gone on to the great beyond." I tapped my head as we rounded a corner, startling a group of idle Jaffa playing some sort of gambling game using the bones of chicken. The hopped up to attention, strewing the chicken bones across the floor in their haste. I hopped over them as I said, "It's a singe occupancy head up here."

"You test my faith my lord god Heka I know that there is no greater power than you in this universe." The young boy replied earnestly. "You bring healing and magic to the universe. You command the impossible and the unknowable Sheshaw, the glorious and forbidden libraries of the Rw. All the knowledge of the world is yours."

"Kid, there isn't anybody in charge of magic and if there was it most certainly wouldn't have been the snake," I sighed in irritation. There had to be a way of letting these guys know that their god wasn't in my head without having to fight them. It wasn't their fault they served a genocidal jerk-wad. "Magic isn't something that one guy runs it just kind of is. And nobody can know everything. Magic is just to broad for that."

The Eunuch nodded with wrapped attention as I continued my rant, opening the wide double doors before me with a swipe of his hand over a metal plate.

"I mean what proof has this guy… given… that… oh boy." I trailed off as the doors opened into the most expansive library I'd ever seen. "I mean wow, just wow."

A space easily the size of three football fields stretched out in every direction from a raised platform at the center, a tiered set of book shelves and platforms reaching as far as the eye could see. Thick scrolls of papyrus and dusty leather-bound tomes sat next to long crystals glowing with the slightest hint of electricity, all wrapped with the musty scent of knowledge any proper library had. Bob peeked out from my pocket as I went silent, his yellow eye darting back and forth around the room in shock, "You take me to the most interesting places Sahib."

"Bob are these what I think they are?" I gasped.

"If you think they're a collection of ancient, probably evil, ritual magics and ferromancy from the Egyptian Gods… then yes." The skull shifted slightly in my pocket as Bob used his teeth to re-arrange himself "Harry. This entire room is warded, badly done but definitely warded. Don't touch anything you didn't want to light on fire unless you know how to get past the wards."

"My lord Heka," A stocky figure at the center of the room waved to me, eagerly motioning towards the center of the library. "This way my lord."

I stormed across the room towards the familiar form of the waving man, ignoring bowing scribes and prostrating librarians as the blood pounded in my ears. I don't remember walking across the room, nor do I remember handing my staff and skull to the Eunuch, there is a good minute and a half of my memory just missing from where my single minded rage seared it out.

My only concrete memory between seeing the man at the center of the room and punching him in the nose is of his look of surprise as he looked into my glowing eyes. He staggered back from my punch, unsure how to react.

"My lord?" He dropped to his knees. "How have I failed you?"

I wanted kick the son of a bitch in the face. He'd left me to die, served me up on a fucking platter for a god of necromancy. I could kill him, kill all of them, and they'd deserve it. They were thralls, inhuman servants of the ancient gods. His men, his flesh, meat to stand between him and those who opposed him. They were nothings that were second to his glory. His majesty his -

"Harry!" A furious Angel thundered in my head. "This is not you!"

I shook my head, clamping down on the sides and grunting as I felt the phantom fingers of the fallen angel scraping across the insides of my mind, tearing the viscous urges from me. Heka's memories, Heka's desires - oh hellfire, I'd acted upon them.

Ul'tak, betrayed me, but I didn't despise him as my inferior. I did not feel that he was my chattel. That was the monster I'd slain hours ago. The monster who lived in my head even after death it would seem. That was deeply troubling.

Ul'tak probed my silence with a nervous, "My lord?"

"You tried to feed me to him." I growled. "To Heka, so that he could own me. I am not freaking real-estate for some supernatural snake creature."

The First Prime sighed exasperatedly, "My loyalty to you has not changed my Lord Heka. I did not doubt you the seven times I have seen your resurrection and I do not doubt you now."

"For the love of - I am NOT HIM." I pointed at my head, "Single occupancy, no snakes allowed!"

"Sokkar has called for a meeting of his vassals milord. I've taken the liberty of preparing your flagship for space flight," He pointed to a device upon his wrist, "The mother ship is ready to travel to hyperspace upon your arrival through the ring teleporters."

I blinked and concentrated upon Lasciel, surely she'd mistaken the meaning of that last part in her struggle to suppress the memories of the fallen god. Because there was no freaking that-

"No my host it is correct," the strained voice of Lasciel whispered, "The ferromancies of the Goa'uld allowed them to sail the stars."

I cleared throat and asked "Are we on Earth?" though the words came out as "Are we on the first planet of men?"

"No... no milord that planet is weeks away." Ul'tak's voice colored with just a hint of worry. "Does my lord desire to spend more time in the healing sarcophagus?"

"No... no I - take me too the ship," I replied realizing that my solution was right in front of my nose. "We're going on a trip."

Ul'tak tapped his wrist, summoning a cluster of hovering rings from the floor beneath us. I squinted my eyes as a brilliant flash of white light flared from the inside of the rings, briefly blinding me as they receded into the floor. As I blinked the stars out of my eyes I suppressed a fanboyish squeal of glee.

Bob actually gaped in astonishment, the lower jaw to his skull hanging open as he said, "Boss this is way above my pay-grade."

A teleporter. I just got to ride a freaking teleporter this had officially become the best day... ever. The First Prime and Lok'tar, apparently unnerved by my manic grin of positive glee, exchanged a covert look of worry. Neither of them dared voice their confusion at my behavior but both had clearly realized that something was wrong with their god.

Good, I still needed them for the moment. They knew how to fly the ship.

I followed Ul'tak through the needlessly gaudy halls of the ship, through rooms of gold leaf murals and marble statuettes of the egyptian deities and finally onto the bridge. The Jaffa soldiers averted their eyes from me, huddling deferentially in alcoves and corners to not catch the ire of their vengeful god. They were as terrified as they were loyal.

The bridge was just a lesser version of the palatial throne room on the planet below. A tall throne of jet black stone and precious gemstones sat in the center of the ship's command hub, raised from the ground on a pillar covered in Heka's greatest achievements in testament to the former god's endless narcissism.

I looked away from the throne, shaking head in disgust. Christ that guy had been an epically self absorbed prick. How could anyone waste their time on writing about themselves when they had the whole universe at their fingertips, and the beauty of the universe right in front of their face.

I used to dream about going to space, it was this vast endless expanse full of adventure and strange races. I would look out at he stars through Ebenezer's telescope and just imagine hopping from star to star. My dreams of being an Astronaut died early. Wizards could not hope to operate anything more sophisticated than a toaster without it going on the fritz... or so I'd thought.

The wide holographic display of the reddish rust colored planet beneath was entirely unaffected by me walking up to it and caressing the face of the planet with my fingertips in wonder. I was in space.

This. Was. Awesome!

I turned to Ul'tak, unable to conceal my giddiness as I said the words I'd been dying to say since I was eleven years old, "Set in a course for Earth. Maximum warp."

"My Lord, Sokkar has commanded that we attend the conference. The consequences of not arriving would be -" Ul'tak swallowed his next words at an angry flash from my eyes. "Forgive me my lord - I ... I was not thinking. It is not my place to question you."

He nodded to the Jaffa at the helm, "Inform the alkesh, we move upon the first planet, immediately."

"Belay that order Jaffa." A feline purr of a voice echoed within the confines of the bridge, the words reverberating with a force that actually left a chill in the air. "Your God has other debts to pay."

I had never in all my life been happier to hear the voice of Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

The Nevernever was full of powerful beings, goblins, pixies, fairies, trolls, centaur, and just about any other creature you could imagine, but few were as powerful or as terrifying as the Queens of summer and winter. Mab was a goddess in her own right, able to bend the laws of physics and magic around her finger as easily with the slightest effort of will. She was pure calculating will and magic bound within her frozen form.

Mab was cold, calculating, and amoral but she was the most familiar face I'd seen since dying. Foolish though it was, I was thrilled to see her. There was a way back to Earth through the Nevernever. Mab was the first thing that had made sense to me in days.

The Fae Queen lounged upon the throne at the Bridge's center, a fine film of frost spreading out behind her in a subtle but effective demonstration of her own power over the elements. She leered at me with catlike eyes, bright yellow clashing with milky white porcelain skin as brilliant and striking as a winter's morning. Her pale, opalescently blue lips were quirked into a predatory smirk that displayed just the slightest hint of an enlarged canine.

Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, was stunning. Not in a girl next door way, or even a super-model way, she was perfect. Every curve, every line, every accent and motion of her was, without a doubt, perfect. The tales of mankind were rife with stories of men who'd fallen for those looks, and the palace of the winter queen was built upon their bones. She had looks to die for, to kill for, to go mad over and centuries of former lovers to prove it.

Only a fool forgot that the ruler of the Winter Court was far more deadly than she was beautiful. Only the damnedest of fools owed her a favor.

I owed her two.

Harry Dresden, damned fool Esquire.

I was so relieved to see her that it never occurred to me sudden appearance of a clearly supernatural being was precisely the sort of thing that shouldn't happen in a room full of heavily armed religious fanatics. As a rule, cultists react badly to people threatening the safety of their god.

They tend to get a bit trigger happy.

Ul'Tak was not so wowed by her beauty to ignore the clear and present threat to his god. He screeched something near incomprehensible in the Jaffa language too fast for Lash to translate, unholstering his side-arm and firing a burst of lightning at the fae queen. "Jaffa Kal tek nok kree! Mak Kree! Heka dor shak! Shek mok kree!"

Arm raising with preternatural speed, Mab caught the burst of energy in a pocket of light and sound, flinging it across the room at a confused Jaffa soldier. He crumpled over on his staff weapon, unmoving upon the ground. Mab's face twisted up into a feral look of glee, a disturbing visage of regal contempt and pure inhuman bestial joy.

The Queen of Air and Darkness swatted the First Prime across his face, tossing the burly man across the room like a child's plaything as she shimmered across the floor. Ul'Tak snarled in shock as he collided with the wall, thick manacles of ice and snow binding him in place.

The Jaffa fired upon her, staff blasts and lightning bolts dissipating harmlessly against a whirling shield of enchanted snow as she sliced down with her left hand, ripping a hole in space and letting a trio of massive trolls onto the bridge. The thick necked beasts were covered from head to toe in enchanted Fae armor, the largest and meanest of their kin. The private guard of a Fairy Queen, each of them was an army in and of themselves.

As the creatures bellowed their battle cry I put myself between the Fairies and the Jaffa, hoping against hope that Mab valued my services more than she'd been insulted by the attempt on her life. If she viewed it as a violation of the laws of hospitality she might have been obligated to slay us all, debts be damned.

"Stand down!" I barked to the terrified Jaffa warriors as they opened the flowering buds of their staff-weapons. "Everyone stand down!

The Jaffa obeyed my order without hesitation, though none of them let go of their weapons nor took their eyes off of the Fae Queen. The thick muscles in their arms and legs were tense, like some jungle cat ready to pounce. Though they obeyed their God, they were no fools. The Fairy Queen was not to be trusted, and they knew it.

Astonishingly, I was not gored to death by angry Trolls.

Mab snapped her fingers lazily, stopping the Troll charge as they beat upon their chests with tree-trunk sized fists. The Troll trio, bound servitors to their mistress' will, stood like elephantine statues. The soft growling hush of their icy breath was the only hint that they were even alive, their long serrated tusks rising and falling with each breath.

The stillness was somehow scarier than the charge. It gave me time to notice the human skulls woven into the creature's pelts and the viscous blue liquid dripping from the tiny cuts along the creatures arms. Each drop that fell upon the ground hissed and spat, virulent acid pock marking the floor. Even by troll standards they were nasty specimens.

The Jaffa looked from me, to the trolls, to the queen and back, unsure how to proceed and clearly convinced that battle was in the near future. I had to avoid a fight at all costs. Brave though they may have been, they couldn't hope to harm a Fae Queen.

It wasn't the Jaffa's fault that they were against something they couldn't hurt and I couldn't let them die to protect their dead god. It wouldn't be fair to abuse their loyalty like that.

She waved her hand to the first prime fixed to the wall, freeing him from his bonds and shaking her head in exasperation, "These past two thousand years of exile have done little to improve the worm-touched. Disappointing really, they have such potential but so little imagination."

"Thank you for letting him live." I replied diplomatically. Had the Queen desired it, she could easily have annihilated the Jaffa. "I appreciate your patience."

"The Leananside implied that you are unlikely to remain reasonable when those you protect are harmed. Your reputation for obstreperous self sacrifice is amusing, but impractical for your coming duties." She waved her hand towards the Jaffa and ship. "And you are in a uniquely desirable position for one of the two favors owed me. Your vassals and position will serve my will Wizard. It will be done."

"My position?"

"Wizard, it is not often that the people who owe me their life, potential and magic ascend to godhood." She chuckled. "Even if it is the least of godhoods."

My face colored at the insult to my station, the station that was mine by birth and glory.  
Part of me screamed, a petulant and spiteful voice echoing within my own mind. A powerful urge thundered within my own ears, demanding that I kill the bitch who'd dared to impugn upon my might. I was a god, and gods do not bow.

My hand twitched, feeling the weight of the weapon strapped to it. I could kill the trolls easily enough. I've killed trolls before. It would be difficult but-

WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING? The Queen of Winter was a force of Nature, winter incarnate. Cold, calculating and merciless. She would swat me like a bug without even trying.

Heka's thoughts... not mine. I needed to- hell I had no idea what I needed to do. This was not good.

Hopefully she couldn't see how terrified of her I was. You could never afford to let a Fae see fear, they fed upon it like a shark in bloodied waters.

"Wizard," Mab purred, a curious lilt to her tone as she peered a me past steepled fingers, "You are far from where you belong."

"I like to get around," I shrugged, "See the sights, go to new places, meet new people."

"So it would seem." Mab waved her hand, opening a door to the Nevernever and displaying the landscape beyond. An army of Fae, hundreds? No thousands- Thousands upon thousands of armored Fae sat in formation upon the parched and scarred desert landscape of the Fae world beyond. An army the likes of which could consume the world of mortal men. "I have many new people for you to meet if needs must."

She snapped her fingers, dismissing the portal, "But they won't, will they wizard?"

"No Queen Mab." I replied. "They won't"

Where had she amassed that Army? Had she removed them from the Borders of Summer? No, they'd been dressed differently than the regular soldiers of the Winter Fae. A secret army? Nothing good, none of it meant anything good.

"You perturbed the Leananside greatly by your arrival Wizard, the sudden appearance of a new obligation so far from the seat of Winter magics has taxed her far beyond what she'd anticipated." Mab tittered girlishly. "She's positively livid to be doing twice the work without warning."

"You'll pardon me if I'm not particularly wounded by her irritation," I snorted. "She spent the better part of a decade trying to turn me into a - wait, why does the Leananside know where I am?"

"Knowledge comes with a price wizard," The fairy Queen sat upon Heka's throne, lounging upon it imperiously. "And you already owe me much more than you'll likely survive, wizard mine."

"I survived the Darkhallow, I survived the Red Court, I beat Nicodemus and the Nickel heads and killed a Queen of Summer, on your orders if you remember." I replied in as even of a voice as I could manage," And Heka as well I suppose-" The group of Jaffa flinched, looking from Ul'tak to me and back "- I can handle a lot."

"You are speaking truth aren't you wizard? A Queen of the summer court? Not Titania... Aurora I suppose?" The Winter Queen mused, "You speak truth. At my orders... curious Wizard, you are very curious. An oddity to be sure. You have truly no idea how confused I was to realize that an obligation to me had suddenly appeared bound to a powerful vassal with whom I have never previously spoken - for a debt held by my handmaiden. Such a curious boon you are."

"We've never spoken." I repeated the words, testing them on my own lips as I snapped my fingers near my ears to be sure they were working properly. "You, Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness and ruler of the realm of Winter have never previously spoken with me, Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council."

"No, Wizard, we have not spoken before today," She smiled predatorily.

That was... what? How? She had to be lying to me but Fairies could not lie - ever. It was one of their most dangerous qualities. Fairies twisted truth into a weapon but if they ever said something directly then the had to tell the 110%, accept no substitutes, cross their heart and hope to die, truth. It wasn't just a rule of conduct it was a fundamental part of their being.

Fairies did not lie.

So unless Mab wasn't Mab, that that meant - oh no. "What is today's date your highness?"

"On the Gregorian Calendar?" She smirked. "It is the twenty second of October of the year nineteen ninety nine."

"Oh hells bells," I whispered, the grey cloak about my shoulders feeling suspiciously like a noose. Though shalt not swim against the Currents of Time, one of the inviolable laws of magic for which there was only one sentence, death. I'd violated two of the laws of magic in as many hours, and while neither necromancy nor time travel had been of my own volition, either would be worthy of my death.

It was the twenty second of October, two days after I'd proposed to Susan. Two days after she'd disappeared from my life fearing that she'd kill me in a fit of Vampiric rage, it was only a week till I'd receive the White Council's notice of war upon the Red Court of Vampires.

"Yes Wizard. It is good that you did not return to Earth, were you found it would have been your undoing." The Fae Queen nodded somberly. "It would be unfortunate to loose such potential. I can see why I will ... bargain with the Leananside for your debt... yes I do."

"I'm four years in the past!" I squawked. "How? Why? What do I - how?"

"It is immaterial to you Wizard, what matters now is what is owed to me." She held up two fingers. "Two favors are owed me. I will have my favor and you will be returned to your precious city, whole and healthy."

"And if I decline?" I sighed, arguing more out of tradition than any real argument to the contrary.

"Wizard, what would you do? Wait three years before setting foot upon Earth for fear that you might be captured and bring about your own undoing? Risk paradox?" She tutted disapprovingly. "It is by my will alone that you were not slain the second you walked in view of the bastion at the outer gates and by pure chance that you were not seen by the Gatekeeper. The Desert Fox already has your scent, and will not give up till he has your blood. How long can you last Wizard? How long?"

Oh hells bells, "What do you want?"

Mab waved her hand, summoning a cloud of fog from the air ducts that cloaked the ceiling and formed a swirling portal of vaporous mist. The roar of unnaturally shifting winds commingled with the confused Jaffa gasps of astonishment, heralding the formation of ornate murals of color and sound. The silken strands of undulating mist caressed the ship's hull, obscuring everything in sight.

And suddenly we were no longer in the bridge. An etherial landscape of faintly glowing blue mist formed the shape of the swirling blackness of space, tiny white glowing pinpricks of stars and planets whizzing past my face as the Fairy Queen tapped a section of Galaxy with an idle finger.

"The mortal world is so hectic. Disorganized," She tilted her head in a surprisingly overt display of emotion. "Ah - yes - here we are."

She waved her hands at a grayish sector of space, distorting the mist-formed galaxy as it reshaped about her will, zooming in upon an angry world covered in spires of jagged rock and pillars of fire. The mist whirled forward, skirting the skyline of the nightmare planet, giving the merest hint of tiny hamlet villages and stone cities leading towards a single massive superstructure.

I'd mistaken it for a mountain at first, but it was in fact a single pyramid taller than the closest natural peak. Corpses of men and beasts covered it's sides, a haphazard mess of messily hung rotting charnel. Even through the bluish mist I knew that the slowly coagulating pools of liquid dripping across the stone was a stomach churning shade of crimson.

"What the hell is that?" I gagged as the vision swam past a jagged spire upon which jaffa warriors were laboriously spreading the entrails of their still living victim. The woman's soundless mouth was unnaturally wide, near dislocated from the fervor of her screams.

"A bastion of the conqueror worms." Mab's cold eyes held no mercy for the victims, searching the scene with clinical disinterest. "This worm."

A robed man leaned upon the upmost balcony of the pyramid, presiding over the hellscape like a proud father watching his child. A thick runlet of juice ran down the corner of his lip as he bit into a meaty bit of fruit, chewing twice before tossing the rest across the balcony for the crows to battle over.

"Sokar." The words passed my lips with a passionate lilt of rage and jealousy. The bastard king sat upon the throne that was by right mine. It would be mine, was I not of breeding pure as he?

I would conquer his realms and purge his stocks of Tau'ri, slaying all but the fittest and saving the tastiest morsels of woman-flesh for my own - Jesus freaking' Christmas, what the fuck was I thinking?

What was wrong with me?

I fell to my knees putting my head into my palms as I pressed down upon my forehead, willing the memories away. This was not me. I WAS ME.

A frosty palm rested atop my head, chilled fingers spreading across my scalp in probatory curiosity. "Ah," Said the Fairy Queen in irritation. "You were not entirely complete in your destruction of the worm."

"I flash fried the snake," I whispered past clenched teeth. "It was the best I could manage on short notice. He was sort of trying to take my body."

"Shall I assist you Wizard?"

"Hell no," I growled, staggering to my feet and shaking my head fervently. "I am not some witless mortal for you to snare Mab. I know nothing from the Sidhe do comes without a price."

"Oh wizard," Mab sighed, a mix of irritation and mild approval coloring her tone. "Your stubbornness was not exaggerated in the slightest. I give you my word, I will only remove the Worm's influence from your mind for the length of our conversation. I will not alter your own memories nor impose my will upon you. You have my word as Queen of the Winter Court."

"Fine," I was obstinate, not stupid. She would keep her word. She had to.

She tapped the top of my head twice with her index finger, causing a sensation like a raw egg dripping down my head as the Goa'uld memories were purged. A feminine exhalation of ecstasy reverberated within my skull, the fallen angel in near orgasmic bliss. Holding back the memories of the Goa'uld had taxed her more than I'd realized.

Having them had changed me more than I'd realized.

Shame, guilt and horror smashed me across the jaw like a freight train. In the past twenty four hours I'd considered rape, murder, and outright freaking genocide. Hell, the only reason I hadn't done it was because I was too mule-headed to allow anyone else to tell me what to do.

It was like Mab had shed the scales from my eyes and restored my own humanity. "What... what's wrong with me?"

"Wrong?" Mab considered the matter. "Nothing, provided that you don't view things through the prism of human morality. The wormkin spread their knowledge through their blood, imposing their knowledge and values upon the next generation. I am surprised that you were as skilled in resisting them as you have been so far. It stretches the bounds of credulity."

My palm itched where the Angelic sigil was branded upon my flesh as an exhausted whisper murmured in satisfaction. I willed thanks in her direction as I addressed the Winter Queen, "I'm tougher than I look."

"Perhaps, but these memories will overwhelm you wizard. You were at the breaking point after mere hours of exposure." Mab shook her head idly. "Stubbornness will only get you so far."

I didn't really have a reply to that one. If Lash's pained murmurs of assent were any guide, I was pretty much screwed. The Angel's shadow rarely admitted to her own limits... actually she never admitted to her own limits. Lash was always there when I got to the edge of what I could to offer me unbridled demonic power. She should have been virtually brow beating me with the coin as a way of suppressing the memories.

"Not... not worth it," A small voice whispered. "She... she wouldn't be any better..."

My jaw dropped. Lash had just told me not to call her coin.

Mab smirked, misreading my look of shock. "Yes Wizard. You are doomed without my help. You will become a monstrous shadow of yourself. But you need not fear. I am fair. You cannot provide me with my third boon if you are dead or a raving madman."

"So... you'll cure me?" I probed hesitantly. "And... and take me back to my own time?"

"For a price. Yes. I can cure you and give you the secret to returning to where you belong," Mab smirked. "You have my word."

I sighed, "What do you want?"

"You will collect an item for me in Sokar's possession." The Fairly Queen snapped her fingers, shifting the view of the godling to a long dagger forged of glimmering, rough-cut crystal. Mab reached up for the image, caressing the hilt longingly. "The Key of the Dead, stolen from it's resting place in the final days of the wormkin's rule. You will find it and bring it to me within-" she squinted her eyes and examined the middle distance"- two, nay two days time."

"Why two days?" I shook my head. "And which two days? Earth? Mars? They're different right?"

"The spell upon your mind will last till the rising of the noonday sun on the soil of your homeland." She reached into the folds of her robe and removed an hourglass, placing it upon the arm of Heka's throne. "Forty eight hours, starting from the moment our conversation ends."

Forty eight hours to complete an undisclosed task from the Queen of Air and Darkness or become a monster that would murder his brother for an amusing hat. Jesus Harry, why is it always you?

"I don't really have a choice do I?" I groaned, "What do you want?"

"The Key of the Dead," Mab proclaimed once again into the collective gasps of amazed Jaffa as the mist shimmered to another vision of the blade, forged from crystal, some eight inches long. "It was stolen from it's keeper when the worms were banished from the kingdoms of man. It is owed me and I will have it Wizard."

"Where is it?" I watched the shimmering facets of the blade as they reflected unnatural bursts of psychedelic shapes and color. It was beautiful in a strange way. "Hell, what is it?"

"It is an artifact of the first magic, and the first sin of the old ones. It was the first step towards their undoing. It is the first object of rituals best left forgotten." She shook her head. "Do not cut yourself upon it, or allow the blood of any other to touch it, it brings only death. It must not remain in the hands of the worms and subject to their will."

"Very well." I sighed. "I will do you this favor."

"Yes," Replied Mab as she opened a door to the Nevernever, leading her trolls back to the massive army in the world beyond our own. "You must."

Ok an evil dagger that brings nightmarish death is currently in the hands of one of the transparently evil Egyptian Gods. And all I had to do was sneak into the fortress of an angry god with the help of the Jaffa who... who were going to murder the shit out of me.

Oh fuck me sideways with a birch bark canoe, I was fifty shades of fucked.

Ul'tak had been staring at me with an inscrutable expression of intense thought since I said that I'd slain Heka. Hell, all of them were caught between fear, confusion, anger and dismay. Holy crap what had I been thinking? I killed their freaking God. Why would I tell them that? Why would I argue with them about that?

"The sarcophagus, my host." A breathy voice whispered in my ear. My own private devil was finally perking up. "It clouds the mind, dulls the wits."

Oh, fan-freaking-tastic.

I turned to Ul'tak, staring into the dark-skinned man's weatherbeaten face, submitting myself to his stony gaze. My hand twitched on the staff as I pooled my magic, preparing for the fight I knew to be coming.

"You killed Heka." It it was not a question so much an affirmation of fact. "Heka is dead."

"He tired to kill me first." I replied, my eyes darting around the room to locate where the Jaffa were. Ten of them in the room, I could take them if I had to do it. "I'm fond of living."

"Indeed." Ul'tak nodded. "You are Dre'su'den."

"I am."

"Then I have witnessed the birth and death of a God." Ul'tak slapped his chest with his right fist in a romanesque salute as he dropped to his knees. He shouted to the Jaffa, "Jaffa Kree!"

The collective Jaffa dropped to their knees before me, bowing their eyes from my gaze as Ul'tak shouted, "A man who defeats his attacker in combat has the rights of the victor. Those who defeat each other in single combat have the right of conquest. Such was the word of Heka, and a God's word is truth."

"Tek'pa'korkree!" Echoed the Jaffa. "Truth through strength!"

He raised his eyes to look a me with wonder, "All glories to the new God, the new light, Dre'su'den. God of Magic. He who speaks with the beyond."

"Nuh - no!" I stuttered over the peals of wild laughter echoing in my mind. Lash's sudden decision to grow a sense of humor was not my favorite part of her. "Get up, all of you! "

"Yes my lord," Ul'tak replied as the Jaffa stood, continuing to avert their eyes. "Whatever my lord wishes."

"Just... just stop calling me a God. I'm a Wizard. A warden of the white council. My name is Harry. Call me Harry." I massaged my forehead with a taloned gauntlet as I reached beneath the throne and pulled the cowering Eunuch from where he'd hidden from Mab. The terrified Lo'tar was huddled around Bob, shielding the skull with his body.

"We shall sing prayers of great joy to the Wizard Dre'su'den the Ha'ri." Ul'tak replied. "The Warden!"

"No, Ul'tak you're not - look just don't pray to me ok? I'm - if you need something from me just talk to me like a normal human being ok?" Ul'tak shook his head in confusion, generations of learned behaviors conflicting with what I spoke. Ul'tak served a god. I had killed his god, ergo I was his new god. The glowing eyes and vader-voice were not doing anything to clarify the situation.

"Yes my lord." He replied, saluting me. "As you wish my lord Warden."

"Warden," The Jaffa at the helm saluted. "I am at your command."

"Take me to Sokar." I replied. "I've got a meeting to keep."


End file.
